Christ, yes. Do not make me tap the sign, people!
Reposted from
Ann Aguirre
For the love of God, if I see one more ',grow your own food' hot take.
Sure, for occasional fresh herbs or a few veggies.
Nobody is growing to their entire caloric intake in an apartment or on a balcony.
Sure, for occasional fresh herbs or a few veggies.
Nobody is growing to their entire caloric intake in an apartment or on a balcony.
Comments
At the rate I’m having to add protective layers to the blueberries I have my doubts on them. (Stupid 🐇)
No brains or filter organs, of course. I’m not crazy.
Ah. Another writer ~
Hmm
1/2 worried.
Most years, there were several rows of corn, and several rows of green beans (which if I never snap another green bean for the rest of my life....), potatoes, zucchini, tomato...
And we still bought veggies at the store.
That was 1/4 acre, and several hours a day.
And lettuce was spring, corn was fall. I did have enough corn for a couple of pecks to grind.
But that wasn't any proteins (save eggs, we had 36 chickens)
But that was after seed reserve.
It wasn’t staples, it was supplemental.
If you want a meal now you should have planted the crop a year ago. And it needs another year before that to grow the seeds.
I don’t do tomatoes, because the critters eat them, and even fruit trees have bad years, pests, and squirrels.
/joke, mostly
Saying that, our courgette harvest failed utterly last year due to the weather :(
4 mounds with 17 zucchini seeds in each one.
We had it stacked like firewood.
She tried to give my cousins next door some, her sister threw it back with a threatening note tied around it.
I'm gonna grow hydroponic produce soon. But not to stay alive; just because yum.
Gardening: gambling, but make it to take ages and cause lower back ache 😮💨
I have found if I catch the strawberries early enough and put bags on tight enough but not too tight to crush the stem, I could harvest those five strawberries my plants produced.
Putting a thick layer of hay around the plants helped a lot last year. Along with a few beer traps.
I'll be damned that my cilantro never grows.
You can fed a family on half an acre of potatoes and a goat, but you need the half acre, the knowledge of how to keep your potatoes alive, and the ability to live on nothing but potatoes and never quite enough of them.
(OK, we DID go live in the woods and attempted to grow food, but more than just yams, and bought most of our food anyway.)
We ended up with 20kg of potatoes.
Both for safety and so that people will not forage too many wild bulbs.
"However, the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service strongly cautions foragers that the many highly toxic plants commonly called deathcamas grow in the same habitat and can be easily confused with it when flowers are not present."
I have tasted deathcamas (Toxicoscordion venenosum). It tastes like bitter tea in pool water with a touch of prickly danger. It is very clearly toxic. When in doubt, spit it out.
(I probably have part of that wrong)
Also Tudor Monastery Farm is great, as is Ruth Goodman.
With bad soil, you could be looking at 5+ acres per cow.
I gardened ALL THE TIME in NC, I did not have a full time job, and we got, oh, maybe twenty meals a year, most of which were caprese.
It helps! It's fun, and good for your soul, but .....
Some people just don’t get it.
I should plant tomatoes this year because they're fun to grow and I like heirloom varieties. That first year I probably had 40 to 50 lbs of them, a nice amount to make into sauce and freeze for eating during the winter.
Second best is today.
I especially love the basil I forgot about for 2 weeks, dont use, & come out to see it all gone to seed.
But fresh tomatoes can be nice! Just... make other plans
It gradually dawned on him that they weren't catering to the domestic vegetable grower.
lol
lmao
We grow enough oregano, thyme, and basil to not have to buy any, but pretty sure we can't live off that.
I need a packet of whatever seeds they're using.
Here's Serbian minister of commerce claiming that two eggs can sustain a person for a whole day: https://youtube.com/shorts/O7os479DQPA
There’s a reason some midwesterners have to lock their cars and roll up their windows in town so they don’t come back to a new bag of squash
Not sure turning my backyard into a giant vegetable garden would be either.
Where I live, the peaches need to be sprayed regularly or encased in something so they don’t get worms. Plus pruning, thinning, checking that’s it’s healthy… that reminds me, it’s about time to do the winter horticultural oil spray.
By starting with a large one.
None for me; vegetarian and all that. But I get more zucchini this way.
https://doi.org/10.1038/srep44707
*adds sprig of home-grown rosemary*
THERE!
*nods in self-satisfaction*
And I can't eat brains they don't have....
2-3 kg/potatoes per person/day: close to a ton/per person and year... What is the yield of a potato field?
But you need space to rotate or pests and pathogens start to build up.
And e.g. Irish history tells the tale of the perils of mono-culture.
I got 2 flats of six packs.
There's time, tricks, & hard work learning to grow food. It may not work.
She thought they came one to a plant, like carrots.
Yeah.
We were too poor *not* to eat them, but even then it was a lot. If there's a way to eat zucchini, I've done it.
I have refused to eat zucchini since then.
Guess how much frost we have.
GO ON GUESS
probability of purchasing more of these seeds next year? 99.99%
But yeah...food for a family for an entire year it was not.
My grandparents raised 7 kids on a farm during the Depression. I know they didn't find "homesteading" easy going.
Knowing people well enough to give and receive help when needed will improve your life.
Whether or not you can grow your own vegetables, you can learn how to prepare and store food that's seasonally available and grown locally.
I’m so pleased!!! Seriously, this very likely changes the direction of my family goals ~ thank you!!!
read "Prairie Fires" for just how fucking awesome rugged U.S. pioneering was, especially when, as it turned out, some was only due to Pa's ego
:-^)
(Maybe I should have used ⭐ instead?)
The rest? The parseley was the first to die. The rest followed soon.
It takes a long time to grow, harvest, and store properly.
Now I keep bees and the calorie per kilo harvest is much better. But depends on many uncontrollable factors.
Yaupon holly might be your best bet for homegrown caffeine as it’s native to the US, but I haven’t tried it.
*unless they’re working for a big corporation, in which case going to the bathroom on the clock is prosecutable theft
https://youtu.be/HyW5QciFAhc?si=Md3RwH3WeZvjvIni
Pure hydroponics? Challenging. Chance of rot too high.
But I found someone demonstrating the Kratky method along with slowly layering substrate over the growing plant.
https://youtu.be/gJyDyvqr-h4?si=2SlUXPnmjQ20p-c6
It does however, give kids something to plant, water, harvest, and cook. That, I think is meaningful and they are tasty freshly harvested.
I googled and saw the claim 3-5 kg per pallet for pallet gardens
I...have no illusions about what it takes to grow your own food and raise your own meat. Especially with chickens. We had two dozen hens, and raised 50-150 fryers a year.
(more green beans than even I can eat, tho. Nom.)
https://kitauthor.com/product/upcycled-kitty-litter-bucket-garden-frame-plans/
I'm just too other priorities to get it started
Maybe hot lemon with honey? Honey is slightly easier to get than sugar.
I think that's... the best way to approach such things.
...anyway it's about an acre, less with some factory farming methods. But yeah. And even farmers generally buy and trade with others.
And then you have to deal with crop loss and failure.
These days I grow a few herbs and things.
The cost to house them
The cost to maintain their health
The cost to feed them
The time to raise them
The materials necessary to continue to hatch them
etc. etc. etc.
Still, there are benefits! I hear chickens are very warm and like cuddles sometimes.
They are very good for cuddles, though.
so expensive, but so cute
But some are just dumb, and *will* fly into the walls of the coop. Sigh.
And so I mostly don't, but I would do it if I loved the labor and time portions.
Nothing beats the taste of a freshly picked alpine strawberry but they ain't cheap
Also, they should be things you actually like to eat.
Yes my NYS saltwater fishing license is free.
Second one, half the price.
mint, on the other hand? yeah that stuff is basically free
(I got the consult as part of preemie care.)
My girls are pets. I've spent thousands on vet bills over the years. You can't do that if you're trying to save money on eggs.
Sour/slow crop, and vent gleet are the other major ones I can think of.
I recommend joining the Backyard Chickens forum, and just reading the calls for help on the sickness/injury subsections.
Also the chicken Reddits.
Careful of quakery though. Always look for advice with sources. Or look for research on Google scholar. You'll see diatomaceous earth & apple cider vinegar recommended a lot. Don't get hoodwinked. They are not panaceas.
It took a healthy chunk of their retirement daily time - back yard with rows of green beans and radishes and onions and whatnot, going to trap crawfish or fish for salmon. Not really easy for a working family
Then they all got fungus and died. 🙃
garlic or paprika is not impossible in principle, just scale is wrong - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuibvlcUKD0
I don't understand that mindset that if a person can't grow everything, then why bother.
Extreme ex: I grew brussels sprouts once.
2 plants took up 1/4 of my available urban lot for more than 1/2 my growing season (I am a 3 season gardener, too). At harvest I got 1.25 lbs worth of crop. If I had planted summer bush beans and fall kale instead ...
I have better luck with fennel and arugula. Occasionally the celery and chard cooperate.
I’m not feeding my family on just what I grow even when everything cooperates tho
The meerkat is most productive, I get about 9 pints of spread and 6 pints of jelly every year.
And then they had a few too many bad Winters and died a few years ago 🙃