I’d be curious, if anyone might have an answer, about “suburban prepping”. Have been told that gardening is of limited value in such a situation insofar as in tough times your garden will get poached.
Not knowing your "suburban prepping" circumstance, nor space available, you might consider container gardening on a porch or balcony.
Also, if a conventional garden area, there are motion activated water sprinklers to keep out pests (both four legged, and two legged pests).
Another alternative is to interplant veggies along with flowering plants.
Another alternative is to plant camouflaged vegetables like purple carrots, black krim tomatoes, etc., and other heirloom varieties with unusual coloring.
Also, there are several misplaced edible plants (we call them weeds) such as purslane, dandelion greens, burdock, sunchokes,
egyption walking onions, wild chive, spearmint, water cress, etc.
Euell Gibbons wrote a whole series of books, starting with "Stalking the Wild Asperigas" for finding edible wild plants in nature, and describes where to find for them.
Perhaps you might be interested in our gardening forum hosted weekly by FReeper 'Diana In Wisconsin' for additional suggestions ?
There are a lot of edible plants that don’t look like edible plants. If you’re in an area where “finger-blight” runs rampant, I’d start by looking for the obscure vegetables that most people won’t recognize. Something like Jerusalem Artichokes and dahlias instead of potatoes. Hyacinth beans and lupin beans instead of regular beans (make sure you know how to use them safely). Breadseed poppies look like ornamental poppies if you don’t know them well. That sort of thing.
There are also a lot of weeds that are edible. Most people have heard of roasting dandelion roots for coffee, but I find it better to scrape them clean and cook them up like carrots in a soup.
I’m sure other people will chime in, but that’s a start.
We used these, this past summer, even though we are on property. I wanted something to use on and near our patio....
“as in tough times your garden will get poached.”
You might actually have an easier time than we do out here with 18 Acres. Whatever survives the weeds and the pests and the diseases, ends up getting taken off by the wildlife. I was thinking if we bought a house in town at least the deer and the raccoon and the coyotes would leave everything alone.
Ie, corn - the first year the deer got a lot of it. The second year it was the crows. The third year we don’t know exactly what but it’s something that pulled it down and ate it on the spot. Could be possumsor ground hogs I guess. The frontier was the most interesting. Coyotes! One morning we saw the whole pack come through, pull down the stalks and drag them into the forest. And they ate every last kernel. Last year we figured out to put radios outside in the garden. That did a good job keeping everything away.