Counsel on Gardens and Gardening

Provident Principles and Practices
© David Edwards, 2009

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PRINCIPLES: In General Conference in April 1937, J. Reuben Clark, Jr., counseled those who had space for gardening to grow a garden and those who had land for farming to farm that land.

.Spencer W. Kimball, in the April 1974 General Conference, highlighted the importance of knowing how to produce food at home when he declared that there will come a point when stores will not be available.

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Later, in October Conference that year, he said that growing our own food helps us become more self-reliant. In difficult times, people may regret not having gardened, planted fruit trees and berries, and canned their own food.

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A few years later, Vaughn J. Featherstone, speaking in April General Conference in 1976, encouraged Church members to provide as much of their own food resources as possible. He counseled us to purchase, in the event of a food shortage, a supply of garden seeds sufficient for a spring planting.

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Spencer W. Kimball, in the same conference, echoed the counsel to to provide as much of our own food resources as possible. These resources, he said, might include vegetables, fruit trees, berries, grapes -- so long as the climate permits their growth. Even people living in apartments may be able to grow some food in planters or pots...

Later, in April General Conference of 1981, Spencer W. Kimball reiterated his counsel, asking those of us with land, even just small plots, to grow gardens.

Ezra Taft Benson stated in General Conference in October 1987 that it may be just as critical for our safety and wellbeing today to produce and store food as it was in Noah's day for people to board the ark.

.PRACTICES: Learn how to garden. Talk to neighbors. Read. Attend classes. Grow your own food in gardens and on bushes and vines if the climate is right. Produce as much as you can. These practices will help you should bad times come, times when food is not available from stores. Producing and storing your own food may some day soon be as critical to your temporal survival as getting aboard the ark was to people in Noah's day.

Graphics credits:

Farm crop:
www.ers.usda.gov/Data/CostsAndReturns/Images/Soybean94c3946.jpg

Closed store: Word clip art (modified)

Fruit:
www.ars.usda.gov/is/graphics/photos/k4957-19i.jpg

Seeds:www.nal.usda.gov/images/infofarm/seeds.jpg

Grapes:www.ars.usda.gov/is/graphics/photos/oct07/k5338-7.htm

Garden: D. or S. Edwards

Noah's ark: Word clip art