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As a child my family grew vegetables in a sustainable low carbon footprint way and I was very healthy by every metric. I don’t know what concept of “sustainable

As a child my family grew vegetables in a sustainable low carbon footprint way and I was very healthy by every metric. I don’t know what concept of “sustainable diets” you’ve been sold but whatever it is strikes me as very odd. Is the way I ate scalable? With vertical farming, I think quite likely actually. Also if soy “kills you off” early then the longevity of the Japanese is quite a puzzle.

wil421 7y ago
It’s not possible to feed a small family of 3-4 without having acreage. I’ve done container gardens (20-30 containers) to 20x20 plots. It was nice to have supplemental fresh veggies but it was expensive and not sustainable. It was a hobby so the expense was worth it.
- mikepurvis 7y ago
  I'm in a similar place. I do small scale biointensive urban backyard gardening, but it's almost certainly <1% of our annual food intake. Even with an aggressive preservation programme (freezing, canning, whatever), I can't imagine it really making a dent in our overall food footprint.
  - wil421 7y ago
    One thing I want to improve upon is staging plants, even plants of the same type. It doesn’t help if almost all of my cherry or heirloom tomatoes are ripe in the same couple weeks. I’ve moved this year and have a bigger yard but too many trees for a garden. Trying to figure out where I can squeeze plants. What do you mean by biointensive?
    - mikepurvis 7y ago
      See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biointensive_agriculture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biointensive_agriculture Companion planting and composting is most of what we do. Also just overall density— for example, we have probably 2-3x the recommended number of tomato plants in a 4x10 raised bed, and are managing it by aggressively cutting back blighted leaves and controlling sucker growth + providing lots of physical support for the plants themselves. Agree on staging as a challenge; I haven't figured out a good system for that. Conventionally, preserving has been the answer, but it's a lot of work to make that much tomato sauce and salsa, and better hope you like it if you'll be stuck eating it all winter!

wil421 7y ago

It’s not possible to feed a small family of 3-4 without having acreage. I’ve done container gardens (20-30 containers) to 20x20 plots. It was nice to have supplemental fresh veggies but it was expensive and not sustainable. It was a hobby so the expense was worth it.

mikepurvis 7y ago
I'm in a similar place. I do small scale biointensive urban backyard gardening, but it's almost certainly <1% of our annual food intake. Even with an aggressive preservation programme (freezing, canning, whatever), I can't imagine it really making a dent in our overall food footprint.
- wil421 7y ago
  One thing I want to improve upon is staging plants, even plants of the same type. It doesn’t help if almost all of my cherry or heirloom tomatoes are ripe in the same couple weeks. I’ve moved this year and have a bigger yard but too many trees for a garden. Trying to figure out where I can squeeze plants. What do you mean by biointensive?
  - mikepurvis 7y ago
    See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biointensive_agriculture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biointensive_agriculture Companion planting and composting is most of what we do. Also just overall density— for example, we have probably 2-3x the recommended number of tomato plants in a 4x10 raised bed, and are managing it by aggressively cutting back blighted leaves and controlling sucker growth + providing lots of physical support for the plants themselves. Agree on staging as a challenge; I haven't figured out a good system for that. Conventionally, preserving has been the answer, but it's a lot of work to make that much tomato sauce and salsa, and better hope you like it if you'll be stuck eating it all winter!