Shielding Against EMP – The Complete Guide to Protecting Your Electronics

An EMP does not care how prepared you think you are. It does not knock politely, it does not give warning, and it does not discriminate between a hundred-dollar radio and a ten-thousand-dollar solar setup. If your gear is not shielded when it hits, you are running on whatever survives, and that number could be close to zero.

This guide breaks down every real shielding method that works, from a metal trash can in your garage to a whole-house protection device wired into your panel. No filler, no theory for theory’s sake. The Congressional EMP Commission has spent years documenting how exposed the grid and civilian electronics really are, and the short version is simple: shielding is not optional if you want anything electronic to work after the event.

What an EMP Actually Does to Your Gear

A nuclear-generated EMP produces three distinct pulses, and each one attacks differently. E1 is the fast component, a sharp spike that hits in nanoseconds and fries unprotected circuit boards, chips, and anything with a microprocessor. E2 behaves more like a lightning-related surge. E3 is the slow, long-duration pulse that induces massive currents in long conductors like power lines and pipelines, which is the piece that can take down the grid itself for months.

Shielding your personal electronics is mainly a fight against E1. That is the pulse that will silently kill a radio, a solar charge controller, or a car’s ECU sitting on a shelf, even if it is turned off and unplugged. Unplugged does not mean protected. That is the single biggest misconception that gets preppers killed on gear they thought was safe.

The Core Principle Behind Every Shielding Method

Every method in this article, from a trash can to a commercial Faraday box, works on the same physics. A conductive metal enclosure causes the electromagnetic energy to travel across the outer surface and disperse, rather than penetrating to whatever is inside. This is the Faraday cage principle, and it has been tested and measured by NIST for decades using enclosures ranging from small electronic housings to full-scale rooms.

Three rules apply no matter which method you use:

• Full conductive coverage. Any gap, crack, or seam is a path for the pulse to enter. A cage that is 95 percent sealed is not 95 percent effective, it can be closer to zero, because energy finds the weak point.
• No contact between your gear and the shield. If your device touches the interior wall of the enclosure, energy traveling across that surface can jump directly into your electronics. Insulate with cardboard, foam, or a non-conductive liner.
• Double protection beats single protection. A box inside a box, or a wrapped device inside a lined container, gives you a margin of error if the outer layer has a flaw you missed.

Do You Need to Ground Your Faraday Cage?

This question causes more arguments in prepper circles than almost anything else, so here is the straight answer. For a properly sealed, fully enclosed Faraday cage with nothing penetrating the shield, grounding does very little for EMP protection specifically. The shield’s job is to keep the charge on the outside and separate from the interior, and it does that whether or not it is connected to the earth.

Where grounding does matter is static discharge and general electrical safety, not the EMP pulse itself. If you are building a large cage with cables, antennas, or any conductor running from outside to inside, that conductor needs proper filtering or grounding, because it becomes a direct path straight through your shield. For small, fully sealed containers like ammo cans, trash cans, and Faraday bags, skip the anxiety about grounding and focus your energy on sealing every seam instead. That is where the real vulnerability lives.

Method 1: Metal Trash Cans and Ammo Cans

The cheapest, most accessible option, and still effective when built correctly. A galvanized steel trash can with a tight-fitting lid, or a military surplus ammo can with an intact rubber gasket, both make solid Faraday enclosures.

How to build one right:

• Line the interior completely with cardboard or foam so nothing touches bare metal.
• Wrap individual devices in aluminum foil first, three layers minimum, as a backup layer inside the main container.
• Seal the lid seam with conductive copper tape if the fit is not snug. A loose-fitting lid is the most common failure point.
• Store spares of anything you cannot live without: a handheld radio, a spare charge controller, headlamps, a backup phone with data loaded on it.

Ammo cans have the advantage of an actual gasket seal, which makes them more forgiving than a trash can lid. If you only build one shielded container this year, make it an ammo can.

Method 2: EMP Shielding Cloth and Fabric

EMP cloth is a flexible fabric woven with conductive metal, usually a blend of copper, nickel, and polyester, that can be wrapped around irregular shapes a rigid container cannot handle. This makes it the right tool for generators, solar panels, car covers, and anything too large or oddly shaped for a box.

The tradeoff is that fabric shielding depends entirely on complete wrapping with overlapping seams. A single gap where two pieces of cloth meet without overlap defeats the purpose. If you are covering a generator or vehicle, plan for at least four inches of overlap on every seam and secure it with conductive tape, not just regular tape holding fabric edges together.

Method 3: Dedicated Faraday Boxes and Bags

Purpose-built Faraday boxes and bags are manufactured with tested shielding effectiveness, usually rated in decibels of attenuation, and they solve the sealing problem that plagues DIY builds. A properly manufactured box with a conductive gasket closure removes the guesswork of whether your seams are actually closed. This matters more than people expect, since even small, unnoticed gaps can significantly reduce shielding effectiveness according to shielding effectiveness research.

These cost more than a repurposed trash can, but for critical single items like a primary communication radio, a backup hard drive with irreplaceable data, or a medical device, the reliability is worth the price. Reserve your DIY containers for redundant and lower-priority gear.

Method 4: Whole-House and Vehicle Shielding Devices

Beyond containers, there is a category of hardwired surge-protection devices marketed for whole-house and vehicle EMP protection. These install directly into your electrical panel or vehicle wiring and are designed to divert or absorb a sudden surge before it reaches your circuits. Unlike a Faraday cage, which physically blocks the pulse, these devices act as a filter after the surge has already started traveling through the wiring. Independent, real-world verification of these products against an actual EMP is limited, since large-scale EMP testing is restricted to controlled military and government environments, so most civilian testing relies on surge and transient voltage simulation as a proxy.

Treat these as one layer in a broader plan, not a standalone solution. Wiring in your home is a massive antenna for E1 and E3 energy regardless of what is plugged into the panel, and a single surge device cannot physically block that the way a sealed metal enclosure blocks a contained device.

What to Prioritize Shielding First

You cannot shield everything, and you should not try to on a first pass. Work down this list based on what actually keeps you communicating, informed, and powered:

• Handheld radio or ham radio equipment, your main line to information after the event
• A spare solar charge controller and inverter, since the panels themselves usually survive but the electronics controlling them do not
• A backup phone loaded with offline maps, manuals, and medical references
• Spare batteries and a battery charger
• Critical medical devices or their electronic components, such as glucose monitors
• A basic flashlight or headlamp with a spare set of electronics if it is rechargeable rather than purely mechanical

Common Mistakes That Ruin Shielding

• Trusting a microwave oven as a cage: microwaves have vents and door seams specifically designed to leak at certain frequencies, and are not a reliable substitute for a real enclosure.
• Assuming a car counts as a Faraday cage: modern vehicles have windows, plastic body panels, and gaps that make them unreliable shields, and the vehicle’s own electronics are just as exposed as anything you would store inside it.
• Leaving devices plugged in or connected to antennas: any cable running to the outside world is a direct path into your shielded gear, no matter how good the box is.
• One layer of foil and calling it done: thin foil tears and develops pinholes easily. Use multiple layers and a rigid outer container whenever possible.
• Never testing the build: a shielded container you have never verified is a guess, not a plan.

Testing Your Shielding Without Fancy Equipment

You do not need a lab to get a rough sense of whether your enclosure is sealed. Place a battery-powered AM/FM radio inside your container, tuned to a station you can normally receive clearly, then seal it. If the station cuts out completely, you have reasonable shielding. If you can still faintly hear it, you have a gap somewhere, most likely at the seam or lid, and it needs to be addressed before you trust that container with anything critical.

This will not tell you how the enclosure performs against an actual high-frequency EMP pulse, but it is a legitimate way to catch obvious sealing failures before you find out the hard way.

Your Electronics Are Only One Part of the Survival Equation

Shielding your radios, solar gear, and backup electronics is essential—but what happens after the lights stay out for weeks or months?

A true bug-in plan goes far beyond protecting your equipment. You need to know how to secure your home, manage food and water, stay undetected, and make smart decisions when help isn’t coming.

That’s exactly what the Navy SEAL’s Bug In Guide was created for. Packed with practical, field-tested strategies, it shows you how to turn your home into a safe, sustainable refuge during any long-term emergency.

Get your copy of the Navy SEAL’s Bug In Guide today and build a complete survival plan before you ever need it!

Final Thoughts

Shielding against an EMP is not one product or one box, it is a layered plan built from the containers, materials, and devices covered above. Start with the cheap wins, a lined ammo can and a role of EMP cloth, get your highest-priority gear covered first, then expand from there as budget allows. The one mistake that will cost you is assuming any single layer is enough on its own. Build in redundancy, seal everything completely, and test what you build.

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What Prisoners Use as Currency (And Why You Should Too)

There’s a working laboratory for what happens when cash stops existing, and it’s been running this experiment for decades: the American prison system. Inmates aren’t allowed to hold money.

Every facility bans it outright. And yet every facility has a functioning economy anyway, with prices, wages, savings, and even inflation. Whatever emerges as money in that environment earned the job the hard way, through thousands of daily trades between people who trust each other about as far as they can throw each other.

That makes prison currency one of the most honest field tests ever run on what people will actually accept as payment when the dollar is off the table. And if you’re building a barter stockpile for a genuine collapse, you’d be foolish not to study the results.

The Currency That Died Overnight

For most of the twentieth century, the answer was tobacco. Cigarettes were small, uniform, durable, easy to count, and wanted by nearly everyone, which is the exact same reason they became money in German POW camps during World War II. 

An economist named R.A. Radford, himself a prisoner at Stalag VII-A near Munich, documented the whole system in a famous 1945 paper: rations of margarine trading for seven cigarettes, chocolate bars carrying known exchange rates, prices consistent across the camp’s huts like any functioning market.

The Plant You Can Smoke and Will Actually Help You Breathe Better 

American prisons ran on the same cigarette standard for decades. Then, starting around 2004, the federal system banned smoking, and the currency died almost overnight. Cigarettes became contraband, which made them too dangerous and too valuable to circulate as everyday money.

But the economy didn’t collapse. It simply auditioned new currencies, and within a few years, three replacements had taken over. An entire economy switched its money in real time, without a single meeting being held.

The Fish that Became the Dollar

The federal system settled on something stranger: pouches of mackerel, known as macks. On paper, it makes no sense. It’s oily fish that costs about a dollar forty at the commissary. 

In practice, the Mack is almost perfectly engineered to be money:

• First, an unopened pouch keeps for years, so it survives changing hands hundreds of times.
• Second, and this is the strange part, almost nobody actually wants to eat it, apart from weightlifters chasing cheap protein. That sounds like a flaw. It’s actually the feature. Because macks rarely get consumed, they keep circulating like coins instead of disappearing into someone’s stomach.
• Third, commissaries cap how many pouches an inmate can buy per week, which means new money enters the economy at a steady, predictable rate, keeping its value stable the way a disciplined central bank would. The mack even shows measurable inflation: a pouch that traded at about a dollar in 2021 was going for around a dollar thirty by late 2023.

One more detail worth savoring – Prisons pushed suppliers to switch from cans to pouches because a can could be sharpened into a knife. The currency was literally redesigned for safety, the way governments redesign banknotes.

And one fish importer reportedly moved over a million dollars of mackerel a year into prison commissaries while barely selling the same product in regular discount stores. An entire species of fish found its market not on dinner plates but as money.

Why Ramen Took the Crown

In state prisons, the crown went to instant ramen, which inmates call soups. A sociologist named Michael Gibson-Light spent a year inside a state prison studying the informal economy and found the entire thing ran on noodle packets.

Inmates paid soups for laundry service, bunk cleaning, haircuts, and smuggled fresh vegetables from the kitchen. They used them as poker chips. A sweatshirt worth roughly ten dollars sold for two packs of ramen, which tells you how much purchasing power a 59-cent packet carried inside those walls.

Prison food budgets were cut hard across the country, and portions shrank alongside quality. Ramen won because it directly solved the most widespread problem in the building, which was hunger.

When a system breaks down, the thing that becomes money is the thing that answers the most urgent, most universal need. 

So make sure you have a mountain of instant ramen and other “just add water” foods in your stockpile. They’re cheap now, they keep for years, and one packet delivers hot, savory calories with carbs and dehydrated vegetables in under five minutes. Yes, the sodium is high, but when you’re hungry and worn down, salt is exactly what your body is asking for.

And ramen is just one of them. 37 other foods belong on your shelves, the same ones American families leaned on to survive the hardest times this country has seen. See the full list here.

The Only Prison Money That Works Outside

Forget goods entirely for a minute, because the real wealth inside a prison was never in anyone’s locker. It’s in their hands.

Every block has its earners:

• The jailhouse lawyer drafts appeals and parole letters for men who can’t fight their own cases, and gets paid in food and hygiene products for every page. 
• The barber technically works for free, but everyone tips, because everyone has seen the haircut of the man who didn’t. 
• The cake man turns four dollars of commissary ingredients into a cheesecake that sells for eight, slice by slice. 
• The fix-it man repairs the cheap radios, hot pots, and tablet chargers the commissary sells, and never runs out of work because the commissary never stops selling junk. 
• The artist sells portraits and hand-drawn greeting cards, and one card can earn more than a full day at a prison job. 
• The letter-writer reads and writes mail for men who never learned, and stays busy every single week.

At the top of all of it sits the tattoo artist, the most respected hustle inside, with waiting lists that can stretch to a man’s release date.

Now notice the thing every one of these men has in common. A skill survives every shakedown, every transfer, every lockdown, and it starts earning again the same day its owner walks onto a new block.

And there’s no better place to start than nogridsurvival.com. I’ve already built 27 projects out of the 70+ in the book, and I’m telling you – everything you’d want to make around the house, everything you need to learn, is laid out point by point in this DIY guide.

I passed on this book plenty of times, figuring it was just another DIY book that wouldn’t teach me much. Then I saw the reviews section, and one comment convinced me not to ignore it any longer. I actually regret not picking it up sooner.

 

Very straightforward instructions…

“Watching current world events, many of the projects in this book have real world application. We in the US take our electrical grid for granted, but what if it went down, even for a few weeks. This book provides detailed instructions for electrical power generation using solar panels, and a Gilligan’s Island type bicycle generator.

Each project comes with a parts list, photos of each part, and the source the author used for the part. I just received my copy yesterday and today, I am cleaning my garage out so I have workspace to start a couple of the projects. This is a good investment in my humble opinion!!”

Patrick M.

Don’t have No Grid Survival yet? Here’s your shot. Click the link below for a coupon reserved just for Ask a Prepper readers: nogridsurvival.com/AskAPrepperDiscount

Stock Your Shelf Like a Commissary

Run your own preps through those five checks, and your barter shelf pretty much stocks itself:

• Coffee – the closest thing out here to prison ramen. Shelf-stable, everybody wants it, cheap to stack up now, miserable to live without. Grab individual instant packets over big tins so you can trade one at a time.
• Disposable lighters – cost pennies today and check every box: small, tough, and wanted by anyone who needs fire, which after a collapse is everyone.
• Sealed hygiene items (bar soap, razors, travel toothpaste) – move the same way they do in a prison commissary, because comfort turns into luxury the second the shelves stop restocking.
• Salt, sugar, hard candy – old trade goods for a reason. They keep forever and split into any size deal.
• Sewing needles, fishing hooks, water purification tablets – pack a lot of value into almost no space at all.

Two things to keep in mind before you load up that shelf:

• Go easy on ammunition as a trade item. Handing a stranger both something they want and the means to take the rest of your stuff off you is a risk the prison economy never touched.
• Stockpile a few things you personally wouldn’t miss. Remember the mack: the best trade item is usually something you don’t want for yourself, because that’s exactly what keeps it moving instead of ending up in your own pantry.

The Five Tests Every Real Currency Passes

Line up cigarettes, ramen, macks, and stamps side by side, and the pattern jumps out at you. Every currency that’s ever taken hold in a broken system – POW camps, prison blocks, collapsed economies overseas – passes the same five checks:

• Does it last without falling apart?
• Is it small and light enough to carry around?
• Can you break it into smaller pieces for smaller trades?
• Is the supply limited enough that it can’t flood the market overnight?
• Will the next guy actually take it off your hands?

Here’s the part that throws people off: none of that has anything to do with the item being valuable on its own. Forget gold or rarity as value. The mack proved that a dollar’s worth of fish nobody wants to eat can beat out stuff worth way more – just by scoring well on those five things.

And you know what else scores well? Things you probably don’t have in your stockpile. Right now everyone’s stockpiling gold, silver, and ammo. But in a real SHTF situation, if everyone’s holding the same thing, its value drops.

There are other common items proven to hold their worth. They’ll actually become rare in a crisis. Curious which ones? Head to final18.com to see how value shifts once a crisis hits.

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How To Make Hardtack

Today I want to show you how to make hardtack (aka hard tack). You may wonder what it is. I get it. It’s essentially a type of biscuit or unleavened bread that is baked until it has no moisture left. The dictionary describes hardtack as a dry bread or biscuit used as rations for sailors.

Other names, including sea biscuit, ship biscuit, pilot bread, sea bread, and pilot biscuit, have also been known. Because of its dry nature, it could be stored for long periods without refrigeration.

Besides sailors, others, such as soldiers, pioneers, early settlers, miners, and adventurers, have long used this special food. They did so, not just to get nourishment, but to survive, in many cases. It has been a popular food option for centuries. This is a good food to have on hand because it lasts for a very long time when stored properly.

It’s a hard cracker that is made from water, salt, and flour. Please don’t plan to add other ingredients like butter or vegetable oil, since that will reduce the time it can be safely stored.

Some people add spices like ground black pepper, rosemary, or Italian seasoning in place of some of the salt to add flavor, since the dish tends to taste pretty bland.

Those seasonings could also reduce the long-term storage capacity, so consider the implications before adding them if you are looking for the longest possible storage periods. Continue reading to learn how to make this food storage staple.

I’ve had numerous readers ask questions and make comments about this hardtack recipe, so I’ve decided to update the information and republish it. Enjoy!

Where Did Hardtack Originate?

Hardtack dates back to a time before you or I were born. In 1801, Joseph Bent created the cracker. However, hardtack originated in the U.S. in Newburyport, MA. As you can imagine, this type of cracker was taken on long voyages, and Newburyport was a busy port city and home to many sailing ships.

I was recently introduced to the term “Roman Hardtack.” In ancient history, the term “Bucellatum” was used to describe the food used by the troops of the Roman Empire, which equates to their version of hardtack. It may date as far back as 360 AD. This hardtack was made from flour, salt, and water, just like it is now.

They would also have wine and possibly some bacon from time to time as additional items during a meal. It’s hard to imagine a food product we have now would have originated that long ago. They enjoyed it for the same reason we do: it has few ingredients, is easy to make, and lasts a long time.

It’s safe to say that Hardtack has been around for a while. You can read more about the history of hardtack here.

Others will tell you that hardtack was created during the Civil War. There is even evidence that a type of “hardtack” dates back to Egyptian times. It’s safe to say that hardtack has been used in various forms since the early days of civilization.

Kitchen Tools You’ll Need:

• Medium mixing bowl
• Sharp knife
• Baking sheet
• Nail or a dough docker

3 Ingredients-That’s It:

• White flour: is generally preferred over whole wheat flour, as wheat flour contains oils that can draw moisture into the product, increasing the risk of spoilage.
• Salt: serves as an added preservative and also adds a subtle flavor to the hardtack.
• Water: Adding water to the white flour and salt mixture helps create the dough needed to make hardtack.

How To Make Hardtack

Step One: Combine Flour, Salt, and Water

Combine the flour, salt, and water in a bowl.

Step Two: First Mix and then Knead the Dough

After mixing, scoop the dough onto a floured countertop. The dough will be sticky at first. Knead until mixed thoroughly.

Step Three: Roll the Dough and Cut it into Squares

Using a rolling pin, roll the dough out to about 1/2 inch thick, forming it into a rectangular shape. Use a sharp knife to cut the sections evenly, about 3 inches apart. I used a ruler to keep them square.

Step Four: Poke Holes

Use a nail or something with a sharp point to poke holes as shown. Some people poke both sides; I didn’t with this recipe.

The holes are put in the hardtack so air pockets don’t form in the cracker during the cooking process, thus keeping it consistently formed in the same shape.

Step Five: Bake for 30 minutes on Each Side

Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C). Place the hardtack pieces on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 30 minutes, turning once. After 30 minutes, turn the hardtack over and cook the other side for an additional 30 minutes.

Set the cookie sheet on a cooling rack after baking, allowing the hardtack to cool completely.

Step Six: Cool and Store

After it cools, it’s ready to store in airtight containers.

How Do You Store Hardtack?

Many people might think that hardtack is challenging to store, but it actually isn’t. It’s straightforward! Due to its manufacturing process, hardtack can be stored for a remarkably long time, up to 50 years. Grains typically have a long shelf life and are a convenient option when fresh food is unavailable. Hardtack is a great survival food!

Note that some people have used oil in the recipe or on the sheet when cooking hardtack. If that is the case, the hardtack likely won’t last nearly as long since the oil is prone to going rancid over time.

I recommend using mason jars that can be sealed very tightly or airtight using a FoodSaver-type unit to vacuum seal the hardtack. Just make sure that the hardtack has cooled and isn’t exposed to humid air, as it could then spoil.

Here’s the deal: you can make a batch and store it, then repeat the process when you have time. You will never have to buy what I call “forever crackers” because YOU can make them.

What Do You Serve With Hardtack?

Here’s the fun part. You may be wondering HOW to serve hardtack. In the past, you would soften it with water or coffee. You can serve it with almost anything, but your favorite liquid is best.

Do you remember Grandma eating bread and milk? Mark’s parents would have bread and milk every Sunday night. They would grab a bowl filled with milk and place bits of bread in it.

Mark’s parents would eat it with cheese. You could soak hardtack in milk and eat it just like they did.

Add some cheese, jam, honey, meat, salt, black pepper, or any other ingredient your stomach desires. Some may enjoy eating it with soda or beer. You can eat it by itself. However, it’s recommended that you soak it in a liquid before eating, as the name includes the word “hard.” Be careful! Many people have reported tooth damage from eating hardtack without first softening it.

Hardtack crackers have been known as “tooth dullers,” “molar breakers,” and “sheet iron crackers.” Back in the day, behind the backs of cooks who would serve it to sailors, explorers, or the like, many would call it “dog biscuits” because it wouldn’t necessarily have been their first choice of food. Please soften before eating!

Does Hardtack Stay Hard Forever?

The unique thing about hardtack is that it will stay hard forever. It will last forever because it is only made with three ingredients. If you can keep it dry, it could literally last forever.

It’ll stay good even through extreme temps. If you are looking for something to store, hardtack is a good option to have on hand in case of an emergency. At least you know you will always have food.

How Long Is The Shelf-Life of Hardtack?

Some experts say that it can be stored for up to 50 years. As long as it doesn’t get wet and hasn’t had spoilable ingredients added, it can last through anything. Only soak it if you are ready to eat it. Remember, it’s like a cracker, only way harder.

Soup is Perfect with Hardtack

• Chicken Noodle Soup
• Vegetable Beef Soup
• What’s the Difference Between Stock and Broth?

Hardtack Recipe

Print

Hardtack Recipe by Food Storage Moms

Course Bread

Cuisine American

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 1 hour hour

Total Time 1 hour hour 10 minutes minutes

Servings 9 pieces

Author Linda Loosli

Ingredients

• 3 cups white flour
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 cup water

Instructions

• Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C)
• Combine the flour, salt, and water in a bowl.
• After mixing, scoop the dough onto a floured countertop. The dough will be sticky at first. Knead until mixed thoroughly.
• With a rolling pin, roll the dough out about 1/2 inch thick into a rectangular shape. Use a sharp knife to cut the sections evenly, about 3 inches apart. I used a ruler to keep them square.
• Use a nail or something with a sharp point to make the holes.
• Place the hardtack pieces on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 30 minutes, turning once. After 30 minutes, turn the hardtack over and cook the other side for an additional 30 minutes.
• Set the cookie sheet on a cooling rack after baking and let it cool completely.
• After it cools, it's ready to store in airtight containers.

Can I use wheat flour to make hardtack?

The problem with whole wheat flour is that it tends to go rancid sooner, so I would not use it for this recipe if you plan to store it for longer-term use. If your family enjoys this special cracker-like product and intends to eat it frequently, I recommend trying the wheat flour version and enjoying it in the short term.

Does hardtack have any nutritional value?

Hardtack is made with white flour, which is high in calories and carbohydrates. It would help to provide the energy your body needs in times of survival or strenuous labor. Hardtack can be considered a form of survival food. Adding hardtack to items such as milk or soup can help increase the nutritional content of a snack or meal, providing vitamins and protein.

How To Make Bread

How To Make Biscuits

How To Make Pasta

Final Word

I firmly believe we should learn how to make hardtack, along with tortillas, bread, biscuits, and pasta. It fills the belly, and when a disaster strikes, we may need to rely on it to get through the ordeal; I promise.

Please let me know what you usually use as your favorite liquid companion when you eat your hardtack. I think mine is clam chowder! Thanks for being prepared for the unexpected. May God bless this world, Linda

The post How To Make Hardtack appeared first on Food Storage Moms.

from Food Storage Moms

How to Build a Potato Tower

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

A Better Way to Grow Potatoes When Space is Limited

A potato tower is essentially a supported wire cage about 4 to 5 feet high that is layered with straw and compost to grow potatoes vertically. The diameter averages between 2 to 4 feet and the potatoes are planted in layers or tiers of composted soil separated by straw.

Potato Tower Benefits

The primary benefit of a potato tower is that it allows you to grow vertically and save space in your garden. This is a great option for anyone who has limited garden space or wants to maximize the yield from a garden of any size.

Another benefit is ease of harvest. When the potatoes are mature in the fall, you simply remove the wire cage and knock the tower of straw and compost over. You then pull apart the soil and straw and pluck out the potatoes.

There is the potential for a greater yield relative to the space used for the towers but the total yield can vary depending on the average temperature and moisture maintained in the tower. Potatoes like cool, moist soil and a tower sticking up into the air and sun can make temperature and moisture management a challenge.

When to Plant Potatoes in Your Tower

Planting season in a potato tower is no different than when you plant potatoes in the ground. Plant after the threat of frost has passed. This is usually in late Spring depending on where you live. As the sprouts emerge they are subject to any frost and that will diminish your yield and the size of your potatoes.

As the potato plants grow, most of them will emerge from the sides of the tower and the layer on top will both grow to the side and straight up.

Chitting your seed potatoes before planting will give your tower a head start. About 2 to 4 weeks before your planting date, set your seed potatoes in a single layer in a cool spot with indirect light, like a windowsill or garage shelf. You'll see short, stubby sprouts form on the eyes.

Potatoes planted with these sprouts already started tend to emerge faster and establish themselves before the heat of summer sets in, which matters even more in a tower since the soil warms up faster than it does in the ground.

Building the Tower

You’ll need some basic supplies and tools but a potato tower is an easy build. The hard part is filling it properly with straw and your soil mix.

Tools:

• Shovel
• Wire cutters
• Pliers (for twisting wire)
• Sledge hammer
• Hoe
• Staple gun

Supplies:

• Fencer wire 3 to 4 feet wide and 4 to 6 feet long (similar to chicken wire but has a larger diameter wire although you can use any type of wire fencing if that’s all you have as long as it holds and contains the straw).

• Baling wire (for closing up and attaching the cage to the support pole
• 6 foot metal or wood support pole
• A bale of hay or collected straw
• A blend of topsoil, compost and peat moss
• 20 to 40 seed potatoes per tower depending on tower size
• A length of 2 to 3 inch PVC pipe, drilled with holes every few inches (optional, but it makes watering a much taller tower far easier)

Assembly:

1. Drive the support pole directly into the ground. Determine the height of the tower you want to build (5 foot is about the maximum) and make sure the top of your support pole is about that height.

2. Wire or staple your fencer wire to the support pole on one edge of the wire.
3. Curve the fencer wire to create a circular cage. You can connect a length of fencer wire with baling wire if you want a larger cage. The finished cage should be 2 to 4 feet in diameter.
4. Bring the end of the fencer wire back around to the support pole and wire or staple it to create a secure, circular cage.
5. If you're building a taller tower (4 feet or more), stand a length of drilled PVC pipe upright in the center of the cage before you start filling it with straw and soil. As you build each layer, keep the pipe centered and let the straw and soil pack in around it. When you water, pour directly into the top of the pipe and it will carry water down into the lower layers instead of just soaking the top few inches. This solves the number one problem with tall towers, which is dry soil at the bottom while the top gets plenty of water.

Filling the tower with soil and straw:

1. Toss some hay into tower and tamp it down with the hoe until you have about 4 inches of compacted hay or straw.
2. Use your shovel to reach down and drag some of the straw up towards the side of the tower until you have a circular wall of hay against the edges of the cage about 4 inches high. You want to create a well of straw to hold your soil.
3. Shovel your soil mix into the tower filling the cupped well you’ve made with the straw.

4. Plant your first layer of potatoes towards the edge of the tower.
5. Reach through the cage with your fingers and push the seed potatoes into the soil and cover with soil.
6. Add another 4 inch layer of straw and repeat the process of pulling an additional 4 inches up the side of the tower.
7. Plant more seed potatoes and repeat until you get to the final layer of soil at the top of the tower.
8. When you reach the final layer of soil at the top of the tower and you plant your seed potatoes across the layer of soil. You don’t need to restrict the planting to the edge of the tower.
9. Cover the top layer of soil with a final 4 inches of straw and tamp down.
10. Water the tower to setting the straw and the soil and get the potatoes started.

Potato Tower Tips

• You can plant any variety of potato in a potato tower. In fact, another benefit is that you can mix and match varieties. Plant Russet potatoes in the first layer, Red potatoes in the second, Yukon gold in the third and so on. It may be worth experimenting that way the first time you build a potato tower to see if a certain variety does better in a tower than others.

• Locate your tower in a place where it will get at least 6 hours of sun a day.
• Keep your tower well watered. A vertical tower exposed to the sun and winds will dry out sooner than anything at ground level. This is especially true at the top of the tower. That’s why you want the entire tower enclosed in straw or hay. It helps to hold in some moisture and protect the soil from direct sunlight. It also why you want a loamy, composted soil mix. That holds moisture better throughout the day and from day to day.
• The straw is critical to success. The straw or hay you incorporate into your tower will make harvesting easier. Potatoes have no problem growing in a mix of soil and straw and the potatoes are much easier to see in a straw/soil mix. The straw around the sides of the tower is also very important. It’s your best protection against heat and will help retain the moister in the soil. Make sure you are both generous and meticulous with your straw placement between layers and on the sides of your tower.
• A good mix for your soil consists of 1/3 part topsoil, 1/3 compost and 1/3 peat moss. Blend all 3 together and use to grow your potatoes. The topsoil and compost provide nutrients and the peat moss does a great job of holding in moisture in the tower.
• Feed your tower halfway through the season. All that straw and compost will feed your potatoes early on, but a tower gets watered more often than an in-ground bed, and nutrients wash out faster as a result. Around the time your plants start flowering, work a balanced organic fertilizer or a diluted fish emulsion into the top layer to keep the plants going through the rest of the season.

Potato Tower Fails

• The most common lament with potato towers is small potatoes. This is largely due to high heat and a lack of moisture. Potatoes grow best in cool, moist soil. If you have a particularly hot summer or warm spell, water more frequently. In fact, water daily if you can just to make sure your soil stays moist.
• Some seed potatoes don’t sprout. This is usually due to a lack of water when the potatoes are first planted. Water heavily on the top but water the sides of the tower as well. The straw will help to wick the water into the tower but it’s a delicate environment because your root system is above ground rising vertically into the air. Water, water, water.
• If a variety doesn’t do well, it’s possible you had a growing season that just wasn’t right for that particular potato or they just don’t like growing in a tower. That’s why planting multiple varieties in your first tower is a good idea. Stick with the varieties that do well and plant the other varieties in the ground in the traditional way.
• The tower leans or topples in high wind. This happens most often with taller towers once they're fully loaded with wet soil and straw. Drive your support pole at least 12 to 18 inches into the ground before you start building, and if you're in a particularly windy spot, add two or three guy lines from the top of the pole to stakes in the ground to keep everything upright.

When and How to Harvest Your Potato Tower

Most farmers will tell you that the best time to harvest potatoes is when the plant stalks have begun to brown and turn dry. That’s when the potatoes are at their largest and the plant is essentially done growing.

To harvest your tower, cut the bailing wire or loosen any fasteners and removed the fencer wire from your tower. The straw and soil construction should still be standing in vertical position but it will be a bit precarious. That’s a good thing because it makes the next step easier.

Push your tower over and onto the ground. Some of the soil and straw tower will come apart. Reach in with your hands and start to tear apart the straw and soil. The potatoes should reveal themselves as your pull the tower apart and all you have to do is pluck them out. Think of it as “potato prospecting.”

Roll up your fencer wire for next year, pull out the support stake and shovel the straw and soil into the compost heap.

You can also harvest any very small potatoes still attached to the roots and either toss them in a soup or plant them in an unused or random part of the garden to overwinter. You might get lucky and get a bonus crop next year.

You May Also Like:

• How to Grow Sweet Potatoes
• 10 Ways to Grow Strawberries Vertically
• How to Care for Chickens in the Winter
• 15 Easy Ways to Grow Potatoes
• How to Grow Food in Straw Bales

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