24 ms·

People are planting more vegetable gardens

232 points by jelliclesfarm 7y ago

Bukhmanizer 7y ago
Don’t think it has as much to do with fearing food shortages as it does with being bored at home. At least that’s how it was for me.
- jxramos 7y ago
  yah, it's therapeutic, and it is a great supplement of fresh food to compliment shelf stable foods.
- myself248 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden
Traster 7y ago
I wonder if the people planting vegetables are aware of just how much they would need to plant in order to supply even a small fraction of someone's required calories. I mean, there's a good reason we've centralized food production into massively efficient enormous farms with heavily mechanised harvesting.
- nathanaldensr 7y ago
  For my family and me it's not about calories, it's about nutrition. Vegetables are an excellent source of all kinds of vitamins and minerals, especially ones grown in quality soil with quality seeds. It's also about fiber. We get our calories from fats and protein.
  - close04 7y ago
    In general most people planting these gardens "ad-hoc" and not doing it more or less "as a job" probably don't have that much dedicated surface for this, nor can put in that much effort/time into it in order to obtain more than a nice and tasty complement for their meals. If you can consistently offset a shortage for your family then you're pretty much a farmer. And I say this as someone who actually cultivated such a garden for years, with help from the family. I allocated a lot of time each day to tending that garden, more than most people would be able to do these days and have a stable job, even with WFH. It was just a pretty hard but pleasant activity, relaxing, I got fresh air and exercise, and I could get some really tasty vegetables but nothing that could "feed the family". And my livelihood didn't depend on the success. Like a dessert at the end of the meal: great but not quite main course.
  - wsinks 7y ago
    Yeah!! And they taste better! And it incentivizes good composting and soil practices everywhere, which help all of us choose better choices in what we support for businesses and governments.
- periram 7y ago
  Perhaps we have a bigger backyard, but the vegetables we grow suffices our family of 6, after giving away most of them. A fertile land can be surprisingly productive.
- Loughla 7y ago
  100% this is correct. We have 10 raised beds that are 4'x16', and we supply probably 1/2 of what we need for the year for a family of 3. We're super efficient and good at this, too.
  - koheripbal 7y ago
    wait wait... that can't be correct math. You must be getting far far more of your calories than 50%. The normal estimate is that it takes 1 acre of land to feed a person for the full year. One acre is 43560 square feet. Your 10 beds are 640 square feet. Somewhere the math is very very wrong.
    - Loughla 7y ago
      It's the difference in growing techniques and your estimates translating into the real world. Your estimates are based on what, grain production? That grain production equals meat and other things, not just produce. That estimate is also based on traditional row-cropping, is my guess. Also, at the heart of it, your impression is incorrect. I didn't say the raised beds provided 50% of the family's calories, but 50% of our vegetable and other fresh produce needs. This does not include meat, most proteins in general, or fruits. Finally, it is an assumption comparing traditional row cropping to square foot gardening in the raised beds. You get much more produce in a smaller space in square foot versus row crops, but it is much more labor intensive. You cannot use machinery in square foot gardens, compared to row crops. So there is a trade off. In other words, the math doesn't work with your assumptions, because they're two different things. My estimate is that, while the garden produces 50% of our vegetable and produce needs, it's probably 10-20% of our overall caloric consumption. But that's a madey upey number, really. I have no idea.
      - vkou 7y ago
        > Your estimates are based on what, grain production? 1 acre/person is roughly what a pre-mechanization, pre-chemical-fertilizer, pre-pesticide subsistence peasant needs to keep himself alive.
- pvaldes 7y ago
  Not so much as you think. You can have lots of potatoes in a relatively reduced space.
  - mikedilger 7y ago
    Potatoes are indeed the game changer if you need to survive off of your garden.
- snarf21 7y ago
  Exactly. The only people who think "farming" sounds like fun are people who never farmed for a living. It is fine if you enjoy fresh tomatoes or whatever but it isn't a replacement for your grocery store trips. Even if you go big enough to grow enough, you are going to spend a lot of time canning too.
- danharaj 7y ago
  Enormous farms do not optimize yield per hectare, they optimize total amount of land being utilized. Maximizing yields over land is very labor intensive and you would be surprised how productive you can get a garden to be.
- glup 7y ago
  Ya but massively efficient enormous farms with heavily mechanised harvesting don't remind me I'm human, while my garden does.
  - koheripbal 7y ago
    ...which is why you would say it's for your mental health - not your physical health. A home garden provides a trivial amount of food.
    - asdkjh345fd 7y ago
      A garden provides as much food as you want it to. 500 square feet of potatoes provides 25% of a person's caloric needs for a year. That is a trivial amount of land and work, and a substantial amount of food.
- wins32767 7y ago
  I look at growing a garden like washing your hands for this current situation. It won't prevent starvation if the world turns into Fury Road but it can meaningfully move the needle in aggregate and reduce pressure on strained supply chains.
  - tathougies 7y ago
    There is no strained supply chain of food. If anything, coronavirus will cause a massive overproduction of food, because people are not splurging on giant feasts. The issue is that the supply chain typically leans towards restaurants and businesses, and that's been almost completely suspended. It will take time for the supply chain to adjust and food to start appearing in stores or direct to consumer, but it will.
    - wins32767 7y ago
      > The issue is that the supply chain typically leans towards restaurants and businesses, and that's been almost completely suspended. It will take time for the supply chain to adjust That sounds like a strained supply chain to me. =) I'm looking at the current situation as just the beginning of the start of this situation. There may well be localized flareups for the next year or two. Ill-timed flareups may cause further disruption (think the central valley during a harvest). I don't think there's going to be widespread starvation or anything, but adding more resilience to the system can't hurt and gives me something to do outside for the next several months.
      - tathougies 7y ago
        But it's not. The suppliers that supply restaurants and stuff will have extra on hand. It's just a matter of their orders going down and grocery orders going up. I have seen the empty shelves, but grocery stores are still well stocked with enough food to eat.
        HeyLaughingBoy 7y ago
        Around here at least, the shelves are pretty much back to normal. ...except for toilet paper!
- commandlinefan 7y ago
  Yeah, be prepared for some disappointment. I've been growing vegetables in my backyard now for about five years. I usually get a lot of jalapenos, some spices, and maybe a handful of tomatos, cucumbers and zucchinis. Plus it takes months before anything edible appears at all.
- abdullahkhalids 7y ago
  Farm.bot have some calculations on their website [1]. They claim that a 2000 calories/day of vegetables only can be grown using 110-205 m^2. But even vegetarians eat grains etc , so assuming 3 cups of veggies per day, one person needs 7 m^2. [1] https://farm.bot/pages/yield https://farm.bot/pages/yield
- mikedilger 7y ago
  Before potatoes getting enough food from crops was very difficult. Wheat was common in Europe but the amount of work to get calories from wheat is intense. After potatoes it's much much easier to get a lot of calories from a small amount of land. Thank you South America!
- xenocyon 7y ago
  Food isn't just about calories. Fresh fruits and veggies are desirable for good health. Even a small garden producing a small amount of tasty, fresh produce forms a good complement to shelf-stable rice, dried beans, etc.
- asdkjh345fd 7y ago
  We only did that for staples, because we have ways to easily mechanically harvest huge quantities of them. We went from a man with a scythe harvesting an acre of wheat per day, to a man with a combine with a 45 foot header harvesting 600 acres of wheat per day. Vegetables are still harvested by hand. With vegetables we have gone from 4 workers harvesting an acre per day to 4 workers harvesting an acre per day. A whole family doesn't even need one acre to grow all their grains, fruits and vegetables, so the labor really isn't a big deal.
- kyuudou 7y ago
  This family of 3 produces 6000 pounds of food a year on 1/10 of an acre that is organic, non-GMO and vegetarian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCmTJkZy0rM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCmTJkZy0rM They have enough surplus to sell to local restaurants to the tune of about 20,000$/year to supplement their income. They use a lot of techniques handed down from antiquity, apparently. Shh, don't tell the eugenicists masquerading as environmentalists and conservationists!
UncleOxidant 7y ago
I'm not planting a garden because I fear shortages, I'm planting it so I don't have to make as many trips to the store.
- pvaldes 7y ago
  > I'm planting it so I don't have to make as many trips to the store Another correct reason. Is better to spend 2 hours working in the garden than driving to the market. More time to live.
- mywittyname 7y ago
  I do it because some things are wildly overpriced at the grocery. Like, there's no use in planting cucumbers when they are $0.50 at the grocery. But fresh herbs are like $3 a bunch and berries can be $3-5 a lb, so it can make good financial sense to plant some of these. An herb garden and planter will produce easily $100 worth of herbs over a season for nothing more than 20 minutes of planting, then regular watering and tending. I had so much basil last year that I literally ate it in salad. Berry bushes can be a little more expensive, like $20-50. But they also yield crazy amounts of fruit over the season and grow in like 95% of the USA. It's a good investment, and it's a nice way to get some out doors time everyday.
  - Cerium 7y ago
    I focus on foods that are expensive or you simply cannot buy. For example, carrots straight out of the ground taste significantly different than store bought. Despite carrots being one of the cheapest foods I still grow some. Otherwise you nail it with herbs and berries. I estimate a couple basil plants save me at least $50 a year. Another good item I always recommend is to plant the green onion stubs. About 3 square feet of green onions is enough for my family all year.
    - close04 7y ago
      > carrots straight out of the ground taste significantly different than store bought I'd grow a garden today just for the tomatoes. Store bought tomatoes are nothing like the ones I remember growing years ago. But another issue I noticed is that even with the best of soils and care, whatever grows from seeds and seedlings I can procure now still tastes closer to supermarket vegetables than home grown. I'm not sure if the genetic material is to blame or the garden/practices (from my perspective the same as in the past).
telesilla 7y ago
We've started making bread every night for the next day, and I've heard many of my friends are doing this. It's better than what we get in the local bakeries (we don't live in France) and have already discussed continuing to bake now that we figured out some easy tricks. We started here : https://andyljones.com/posts/bread.html https://andyljones.com/posts/bread.html
- Loughla 7y ago
  Good Christ, how much bread do you eat? We make like one loaf a week.
  - senectus1 7y ago
    probably just small loaves. so they always have nice fresh bread...
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  Do you eat an entire loaf a day? I like making bread sometimes but my family can't eat it quickly enough before it goes stale.
  - Abekkus 7y ago
    Freeze it, then toast it.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - dllthomas 7y ago
    > before it goes stale Not a problem! Time for bread pudding or a strata.
    - chrisseaton 7y ago
      There's a limit on how much carbohydrates we can reasonably consume.
mikedilger 7y ago
I'm glad people are doing this. Us long-term gardeners, farmers, farm lifestylers and preppers are happy to answer any questions.
- commandlinefan 7y ago
  > answer any questions well, since you offered... ;) I've heard differing advice on using coffee grounds in gardens: some say you should and some say you shouldn't. Am I doing my garden a disservice dumping each day's pot of coffee grounds into the dirt? I'm trying to grow tomatos, peppers (jalapeno, bell and poblano), cilantro, beans, squash and zucchini.
  - dejv 7y ago
    You should add it to the compost, spreading it to ground will probably don't do much as it will oxidize away.
  - mikedilger 7y ago
    Coffee grounds are good. Either compost or dig in directly. Many people get confused about pH. Coffee grounds are acidic. But it will have negligable effect on soil pH. Something about buffering capacity (I'm sure I'll be corrected by someone). Same thing with pine needles. They are acidic but will not change soil pH. They won't make much difference right away, but adding organic matter improves the soil over time.
    - mikedilger 7y ago
      Let me explain the pH thing better, now that I've had a think. Soil has a cation exchange capacity (CEC). Some soils have higher capacity then others. Think if it like a numeric count of all the molecular points where a cation could ionically bond. On each of those points, either you have a hydrogen (which makes it acidic) or another cation (which generally makes it alkaline). Those are calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, but also a few others in minute quantities even lead (Pb+2). Ammonium is a cation too. When adding something, it adds more CEC attachment points, but also more cations and more hydrogen. Within just the coffee grounds, many of the CEC points are occupied by hydrogen, so it is acidic. But when you compare the number of CEC points to that in the soil, the amount in your soil overwhelms. The good cations in your soil wont be affected much until you have enormous levels of coffee grounds (like >10% or something, I'd have to calculate it and I haven't). And of course you can always just measure the pH and add cations which will displace the hydrogen (it will bond with the anion). Calcium is cheapest which is why people use agricultural lime. Dolomite will give you some magnesium which will probably produce healthier veggies. Potassium is important but too much will just bulk up the veggies rather than letting them develop more healthfully. Sodium is almost never useful.
big_chungus 7y ago
I hope this convinces people to become more self-sufficient overall and grow a little of their own food. Living farther out from dense urban cores on more land will help, and conveniently, it will also make one less likely to fall ill. Telecommuting will hopefully enable people to live much less densely and avoid something like this recurring at its present scale.
- downerending 7y ago
  Sprawl is starting to look pretty good right about now.
- yardie 7y ago
  The climate impact of individuals living in the city vs those living in the suburbs is considerable. More people living away from the city increases deforestation and is a net negative as far as lifestyle is concerned. Telecommuting is a nice option but most businesses don't work that way. I work in the commercial arts world. A lot of it is sensory stimuli and requires paying butts in seats. I can't dropship an experience through Amazon working from bungalow in Chiang Mai.
  - asdkjh345fd 7y ago
    >The climate impact of individuals living in the city vs those living in the suburbs is considerable. Yes, but in the opposite direction of what you imply. >More people living away from the city increases deforestation Why would that be the case? Almost all deforestation is for land for farming, not for houses. How much oil is burned growing food and shipping it and storing it and lighting and cooling stores to sell it? >is a net negative as far as lifestyle is concerned. Not everyone values the same materialistic things you do. >I work in the commercial arts world That's a make-work industry that doesn't need to exist. Consider the massive environmental impact of your industry, and how it adds absolutely no value to society at all. Yet you want to stop people from living further away from massive disease spreading urban centers and growing their own food at a cost of zero burned oil?
    - 7y ago
aresant 7y ago
There is not a shortage issue, there is a logistics issue. The logistics issue is that we have commercial and retail supply chains that are Apples & Oranges level different in terms of getting end consumers what they need. For instance: 1) Commercial Offices - why is toilet paper disappearing especially in big cities? It's not the production side that's failing. It's that a huge amount of toilet paper is bought and distributed by commercial contract stockers. The supply chain has NOT adjusted to get commercially stocked toilet paper to retail centers. And making it worse commercial distributors are FORBIDDEN to sell to retail in many cases! So now you're dealing with a supply chain + beurocratic issue. There are Mt. Everest sized stocks of commercial TP sitting in warehouses all over America. 2) Commercial Restaurants - These establishments fed the MAJORITY of office workers in major cities up until 3 weeks ago. Commercial restaurant supply chains are reeling - they have stock sitting on shelves and are trying to figure out how to get it into the retail supply chain with similar beurocratic and logistics issues. There is not a food / grocery shortage and there is unlikely to be a food / grocery shortage in the USA. But it is going to take some time to sort out how to adjust to this new normal. And inevitably as soon as we figure it out the pendulum will swing the other way :)
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  Agreed 100%. But while you can repackage toilet paper, it’s harder for most people to deal with 10# cans of beans when they would otherwise buy and use 1#. But I guess that bucket of pickles can be rejarred, if they’re available.
- 01100011 7y ago
  You make a good point about the supply chains. There is not a food shortage yet. However, I would not be surprised if there is a shortage of labor intensive food products in a month or so, depending on storage limits. I would not expect shortages of less labor intensive staples like cereal crops and maybe milk. It seems to me that meat packing is fairly labor intensive, so I would not be surprised if meat becomes more scarce at some point. Fresh vegetables seem fairly labor intensive. Fruits can be warehoused for a year or so(AFAIK, at least in the case of apples). Some vegetables are probably more automated(potatoes, corn). I wonder about salad greens though. FWIW, if you're just now considering getting a chest freezer to stockpile frozen goods, good luck. Everyone is sold out.
blisterpeanuts 7y ago
We had 10 pots on the patio last summer, growing cilantro, parsley, green beans, stevia, potatoes, basil, swiss chard, etc. Drip irrigation tubes attached to a timer faucet watered it every morning automatically. At some point I'm going to try to hook in a Pi or Arduino so I can remotely control the irrigation, e.g. if it's raining I won't have to go outside & manually shut it off. We'll be doing that again, and this spring we're also planning to plant a couple of rows of potatoes, carrots, and lettuce. Growing food is not difficult, but it does require some knowledge and understanding of soil pH, pest control, etc. Fortunately there are plenty of how-to videos these days. The food you grow in an organic, chemical free environment tastes fresh and pure, is good for you, educational for the children, and very satisfying. It may not pay for itself in the first couple of years, but over time you'll find that it's well worth it. Freshly grown potatoes taste incredible. We are thinking of getting chickens, but it may or may not happen this spring. Self-sufficiency takes a lot of work, but partial sufficiency is quite attainable for many people. Even if you're in an urban apartment, there are hydroponic devices and grow lamps to help you grow considerable veggies. I suppose we can thank the pot industry for that.
- RosanaAnaDana 7y ago
  >Growing food is not difficult, but it does require some knowledge I'd push back on the first part of this lightly. Growing some food is not difficult. Growing food effectively however, in quantity and for a long period of time, does require a fair bit of experience and local knowledge that you just can't get in one season. My family gardened heavily growing up, and I've been gardening extensively since my mid 20's (late 30's now), and I would say I only now truly feel like I 'get it' with regards to many aspects of planting, harvesting, timing, and preservation. Prior to the pandemic, my goal this summer was to have my house be 'food-independent' for 3 months of this year. I've revised that goal to try and get to food independence by end of spring and maintain that through the end of fall and into winter. My argument would be that gardening has a very low barrier to entry: literally any one can (and should) have a garden. However, the top skill cap on gardening is very high and does take time to achieve. Its also not something that can be entirely short-cutted through self learning/ study. How you grow depends on where you are and the details of your particular garden. Nothing else but experience will get you there.
tathougies 7y ago
Made a good penny selling my tomato starts this year. More than covered my seed purchases for our garden (not due to coronavirus, I just like gardening and splurged on them this year).
01100011 7y ago
It's great if you can efficiently do it and actually use the results. If you have free time, or kids to help out, I think gardening can be a great hobby and help supplement your nutrition. I think it takes some practice to get right. Fertilization, bug control, selecting varieties, site selection and preparation... My past attempts at gardening have reminded me of the comparative advantage of outsourcing my food supply. Even when my garden has done well, I struggled to eat the results(weeks of non-stop zucchini gets old), and didn't have the time for preservation.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Madmallard 7y ago
Planting your own garden ensures you know what crap is sprayed onto the plants.
ctack 7y ago
Being in lockdown has enabled me to really focus on our vegetable garden this year. Am even getting into weeding which is not normally something I enjoy.
- frobozz 7y ago
  This. I used to grow veg before commuting and children got in the way. Last time I tried I didn't have the time to keep on top of the weeds. I hope that now we are all at home all the time, I'll be able to do a bit of hoeing any day I like.
vinni2 7y ago
I live in a place where it’s not good weather most of the year. So I tried some indoor garden with grow light somehow it didn’t work the plants seemed to be sick just gave up. Instead I am stocking up some frozen veggies if they really goes short.
- koheripbal 7y ago
  It takes minimum 1 acre of land to feed an adult. Small gardens make sense for things that are needlessly expensive, like mint, basil, etc... If you have a backyard, the least effort - highest output thing you can plant is a fruit tree.
  - PeterisP 7y ago
    If you're hungry, you plant dense staple crops - an acre can yield something like 10 tons of potatoes (or carrots or pumpkins) - if you're not selling produce, then even planting 0.1-0.2 acres of potatoes means you'd have more potatoes than your family needs (because you eat lots of other things). It also takes a lot of labor if you don't have specialized machinery and will take a lot of space in the basement, but it will keep you from starving even from quite small plots of land. A fruit tree is great, but the proper time to plant one is ten years ago.
  - asdkjh345fd 7y ago
    >It takes minimum 1 acre of land to feed an adult No it doesn't. Potatoes are 15 million calories an acre at the low end of yields. That's enough to feed 20 people. At the high end you get twice that. How much land it takes to feed a person is entirely dependant on what that person wants to eat. I grow a balanced diet of meat, dairy, eggs, grains, potatoes, fruits and vegetables for five people on two acres, and I'm not using all that space and I choose to grow low efficiency things like berries because we like them.
seanwilson 7y ago
Tangential topic, but does anyone have a good no-nonsense evidence based source for how to make bread and/or sourdough? I've been trying sourdough and it's crazy how many contradictory pieces of advice and explanations you read e.g. if the yeast comes from the initial flour or air, what ratio of flour + water to feed it with, how many times a day you feed the starter, how many times you let the dough prove. It generally indicates to me that the process is very forgiving though (as so many variations work). I would have thought most myths would have been put to bed by now as it should be relatively easy to run cooking experiments if you want to debunk something.
- astockwell 7y ago
  This was posted in a HN comment not long ago: https://github.com/hendricius/the-bread-code/blob/master/basics/sourdough.md https://github.com/hendricius/the-bread-code/blob/master/bas...
- mizzao 7y ago
  Here's a google slides deck I put together for how to make good-quality sourdough for a fraction of the effort that the "bread hipsters" go through: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1UoH_BhRWUi0nnGj3uGp47nKoznDLekt5rvzUZZOYDHg/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1UoH_BhRWUi0nnGj3uGp4...
- BostonEnginerd 7y ago
  Harold McGee's book "On Food and Cooking" has a chapter on bread making. My favorite bread recipe is the No Knead Bread recipe that I saw in The NY Times many years back: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/11376-no-knead-bread https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/11376-no-knead-bread I've never had much success getting a sourdough starter up and running.
- cardamomo 7y ago
  I highly recommend books by Peter Reinhart. I prefer to bake with whole grains, so I have his "While Grain Breads: New Techniques, Extraordinary Flavor," but anything by him should be great. His work is definitely based in experience and the science of yeast and flour.
taylodl 7y ago
I'm planting a garden because I plant a garden every year. Well, I've been doing it for the past 25 years or so anyway. I've gotten quite good with production. I shudder at the thought of a bunch of noobs going out and starting a garden, but hey, I was a noob once too and I learned. My biggest advice for a beginner is to consider your approach to pest control. That means identifying the pests in your area, both bugs and animals, and whether you want to use chemicals or natural methods. Seeing as how I eat produce I prefer using natural methods but you have to realize they're not as effective and you will suffer losses. Sometimes those losses can be severe - you'd be amazed at the amount of damage squirrels, rabbits, crows, and various beetles can do to a garden in short order! The cool thing is you're going to learn about all kinds of new insects you never even knew existed happily munching away on all your produce! Enjoy!
- taylodl 7y ago
  This is good advice for dealing with squirrels and rabbits: Irish Spring - https://homeguides.sfgate.com/use-irish-spring-soap-repel-garden-pests-97701.html https://homeguides.sfgate.com/use-irish-spring-soap-repel-ga.... I first heard of this a few years back and it works wonders!
  - remarkEon 7y ago
    Can confirm, this works (at least for the rabbits).
- aszantu 7y ago
  I'd never skip on the opportunity for fresh organic meat and would totally welcome rabbits and squirrels to my garden if I had one xD
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    I'm not sure where you live but I'd think twice (and probably still do it) about eating rabbit from anywhere where people routinely put pesticides on their lawns.
DoreenMichele 7y ago
I'm encouraged to see this. I don't really have anything profound or witty to say, but this makes me feel like we're probably going to be okay.
chris1993 7y ago
Related to this the sales of my gardening app in March were about 100% higher than usual. That's coming off a low base (people don't like paying for apps) but it's a big change. Most of that was in Australia where it's coming into winter so it's not the usual vegetable gardening time. You can't buy vegetable seedlings anywhere at present as they're sold out immediately.
blendo 7y ago
Aspirationally, I’d like to put in the “Three Sisters” (corn, beans, and squash) https://redandhoney.com/milpa-plant-one/ https://redandhoney.com/milpa-plant-one/. What pests should I worry about in Northern California?
- mikedilger 7y ago
  Some garden plants are sure to attract lots of pests. But corn, beans, and squash are not among the most heavily attacked in my experience. You probably won't have too much of a pest problem. The crops with the most pests (in my experience) are brassicas (white butterfly), tomatoes (everything seems to attack tomatoes!), and beets (slugs). Nasturtiums as a trap crop supposedly can draw away aphids. But remember that nasturtiums attract aphids. So it's a gamble. I guess just don't plant them too close. I've never tried.
- dflock 7y ago
  Plant them and find out - it's an interesting learning exercise! You'll get slugs and aphids whatever - plant lots of pollinator friendly native flowering plants to attract hoverflies and parasitic wasps - they'll help you out.
Crcarter 7y ago
I run tech at a small farming and gardening supply company in Maine. We’ve seen order volume jump 2-300% in the past few weeks. We’ve done several VPS upgrades to handle the increased traffic, and our order number allocation system has broken down several times recently. Our digital infrastructure is keeping up now, but we’re all still scrambling to keep the staff healthy and safe as we all work to get the orders out the door safely and responsibly.
- kyuudou 7y ago
  Puts a new twist on "Elastic Beanstalk"
virmundi 7y ago
I’m curious if the Feds will start to crack down on this kind of behavior. Think of the impact on veggie prices once a good portion of Americans are growing their own food. The New Deal already showed the US could come in a demand you pay fines for not buying crops you don’t need. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn
remarkEon 7y ago
I love gardening. Have a lot of really fond memories of playing in my mom's garden (despite terrible allergies) while she was working on it. Tomatoes, rhubarb, raspberries, all sorts of other spices and nectar plants for things like bees and hummingbirds. One summer memory in particular sticks with me, because it was probably my first lesson in the scientific method. Mom's hollyhock plants came down with what ended up being a bad case of rust[1]. We changed the watering routine, fertilizer...nothing worked. This was before google and all that, so we first went to the library and got some gardening books. Went out and compared pictures, but none were exactly the same. Next I clipped some leaves from the plants and we went down to the garden shop a few blocks away and, sure enough, the guy behind the counter (kicking myself I can't remember his name, probably 85 or so with crystal white hair) gave the diagnosis and recommended cutting off all the affected leaves and burning them. Saved the whole lot! Unfortunately, because of work, I live in a city now and that means ... no yard with a garden. The wife also loves gardening. Anyone have any tips for setting something up in an apartment with a balcony? Irrigation is my primary concern. [1] https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/ornamental/flowers/hollyhock/hollyhock-rust-in-gardens.htm https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/ornamental/flowers/hollyhoc...
- ornornor 7y ago
  You can make self watering pots with 5 gallons buckets, their lid, a pipe, and an old T-shirt. But if you’re not going away, you can simply water every day.
dylanz 7y ago
I received my Permaculture Design Certificate from Bill Mollison, my Permaculture for Aid Workers from Geoff Lawton, designed two properties, both included food forests, and I also like long walks on the beach and sushi. WHO’S HIRING APRIL 2020. Joke aside, gardens not only provide food, I’ve found they act as an anti-depressant and are quite fun to build. One principle of Permaculture is to optimize space to provide for human needs. I feel like the HN community could come up with some cool shit in this space.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
rootsudo 7y ago
Hydroponics are really easy to produce :)
doggodad 7y ago
Here's the list for this year, first growing season after recovering from the Nov 2018 fire: - Red, green & yellow bell peppers - Jalapeños - Okra - Heirloom tomatos - Cherry tomatos - Yellow squash - Zucchini - Watermelon - Sweet corn - Sunflowers Critters we have to deal with: - Black bears - Deer - Crows - Blue jays - Turkeys - Squirrels - Snails - Drug addicts who can't see me or the Glock I'm racking

232 points by jelliclesfarm 7y ago

Don’t think it has as much to do with fearing food shortages as it does with being bored at home. At least that’s how it was for me.

jxramos 7y ago
yah, it's therapeutic, and it is a great supplement of fresh food to compliment shelf stable foods.
myself248 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden

Traster 7y ago

I wonder if the people planting vegetables are aware of just how much they would need to plant in order to supply even a small fraction of someone's required calories. I mean, there's a good reason we've centralized food production into massively efficient enormous farms with heavily mechanised harvesting.

nathanaldensr 7y ago
For my family and me it's not about calories, it's about nutrition. Vegetables are an excellent source of all kinds of vitamins and minerals, especially ones grown in quality soil with quality seeds. It's also about fiber. We get our calories from fats and protein.
- close04 7y ago
  In general most people planting these gardens "ad-hoc" and not doing it more or less "as a job" probably don't have that much dedicated surface for this, nor can put in that much effort/time into it in order to obtain more than a nice and tasty complement for their meals. If you can consistently offset a shortage for your family then you're pretty much a farmer. And I say this as someone who actually cultivated such a garden for years, with help from the family. I allocated a lot of time each day to tending that garden, more than most people would be able to do these days and have a stable job, even with WFH. It was just a pretty hard but pleasant activity, relaxing, I got fresh air and exercise, and I could get some really tasty vegetables but nothing that could "feed the family". And my livelihood didn't depend on the success. Like a dessert at the end of the meal: great but not quite main course.
- wsinks 7y ago
  Yeah!! And they taste better! And it incentivizes good composting and soil practices everywhere, which help all of us choose better choices in what we support for businesses and governments.
periram 7y ago
Perhaps we have a bigger backyard, but the vegetables we grow suffices our family of 6, after giving away most of them. A fertile land can be surprisingly productive.
Loughla 7y ago
100% this is correct. We have 10 raised beds that are 4'x16', and we supply probably 1/2 of what we need for the year for a family of 3. We're super efficient and good at this, too.
- koheripbal 7y ago
  wait wait... that can't be correct math. You must be getting far far more of your calories than 50%. The normal estimate is that it takes 1 acre of land to feed a person for the full year. One acre is 43560 square feet. Your 10 beds are 640 square feet. Somewhere the math is very very wrong.
  - Loughla 7y ago
    It's the difference in growing techniques and your estimates translating into the real world. Your estimates are based on what, grain production? That grain production equals meat and other things, not just produce. That estimate is also based on traditional row-cropping, is my guess. Also, at the heart of it, your impression is incorrect. I didn't say the raised beds provided 50% of the family's calories, but 50% of our vegetable and other fresh produce needs. This does not include meat, most proteins in general, or fruits. Finally, it is an assumption comparing traditional row cropping to square foot gardening in the raised beds. You get much more produce in a smaller space in square foot versus row crops, but it is much more labor intensive. You cannot use machinery in square foot gardens, compared to row crops. So there is a trade off. In other words, the math doesn't work with your assumptions, because they're two different things. My estimate is that, while the garden produces 50% of our vegetable and produce needs, it's probably 10-20% of our overall caloric consumption. But that's a madey upey number, really. I have no idea.
    - vkou 7y ago
      > Your estimates are based on what, grain production? 1 acre/person is roughly what a pre-mechanization, pre-chemical-fertilizer, pre-pesticide subsistence peasant needs to keep himself alive.
pvaldes 7y ago
Not so much as you think. You can have lots of potatoes in a relatively reduced space.
- mikedilger 7y ago
  Potatoes are indeed the game changer if you need to survive off of your garden.
snarf21 7y ago
Exactly. The only people who think "farming" sounds like fun are people who never farmed for a living. It is fine if you enjoy fresh tomatoes or whatever but it isn't a replacement for your grocery store trips. Even if you go big enough to grow enough, you are going to spend a lot of time canning too.
danharaj 7y ago
Enormous farms do not optimize yield per hectare, they optimize total amount of land being utilized. Maximizing yields over land is very labor intensive and you would be surprised how productive you can get a garden to be.
glup 7y ago
Ya but massively efficient enormous farms with heavily mechanised harvesting don't remind me I'm human, while my garden does.
- koheripbal 7y ago
  ...which is why you would say it's for your mental health - not your physical health. A home garden provides a trivial amount of food.
  - asdkjh345fd 7y ago
    A garden provides as much food as you want it to. 500 square feet of potatoes provides 25% of a person's caloric needs for a year. That is a trivial amount of land and work, and a substantial amount of food.
wins32767 7y ago
I look at growing a garden like washing your hands for this current situation. It won't prevent starvation if the world turns into Fury Road but it can meaningfully move the needle in aggregate and reduce pressure on strained supply chains.
- tathougies 7y ago
  There is no strained supply chain of food. If anything, coronavirus will cause a massive overproduction of food, because people are not splurging on giant feasts. The issue is that the supply chain typically leans towards restaurants and businesses, and that's been almost completely suspended. It will take time for the supply chain to adjust and food to start appearing in stores or direct to consumer, but it will.
  - wins32767 7y ago
    > The issue is that the supply chain typically leans towards restaurants and businesses, and that's been almost completely suspended. It will take time for the supply chain to adjust That sounds like a strained supply chain to me. =) I'm looking at the current situation as just the beginning of the start of this situation. There may well be localized flareups for the next year or two. Ill-timed flareups may cause further disruption (think the central valley during a harvest). I don't think there's going to be widespread starvation or anything, but adding more resilience to the system can't hurt and gives me something to do outside for the next several months.
    - tathougies 7y ago
      But it's not. The suppliers that supply restaurants and stuff will have extra on hand. It's just a matter of their orders going down and grocery orders going up. I have seen the empty shelves, but grocery stores are still well stocked with enough food to eat.
      - HeyLaughingBoy 7y ago
        Around here at least, the shelves are pretty much back to normal. ...except for toilet paper!
commandlinefan 7y ago
Yeah, be prepared for some disappointment. I've been growing vegetables in my backyard now for about five years. I usually get a lot of jalapenos, some spices, and maybe a handful of tomatos, cucumbers and zucchinis. Plus it takes months before anything edible appears at all.
abdullahkhalids 7y ago
Farm.bot have some calculations on their website [1]. They claim that a 2000 calories/day of vegetables only can be grown using 110-205 m^2. But even vegetarians eat grains etc , so assuming 3 cups of veggies per day, one person needs 7 m^2. [1] https://farm.bot/pages/yield https://farm.bot/pages/yield
mikedilger 7y ago
Before potatoes getting enough food from crops was very difficult. Wheat was common in Europe but the amount of work to get calories from wheat is intense. After potatoes it's much much easier to get a lot of calories from a small amount of land. Thank you South America!
xenocyon 7y ago
Food isn't just about calories. Fresh fruits and veggies are desirable for good health. Even a small garden producing a small amount of tasty, fresh produce forms a good complement to shelf-stable rice, dried beans, etc.
asdkjh345fd 7y ago
We only did that for staples, because we have ways to easily mechanically harvest huge quantities of them. We went from a man with a scythe harvesting an acre of wheat per day, to a man with a combine with a 45 foot header harvesting 600 acres of wheat per day. Vegetables are still harvested by hand. With vegetables we have gone from 4 workers harvesting an acre per day to 4 workers harvesting an acre per day. A whole family doesn't even need one acre to grow all their grains, fruits and vegetables, so the labor really isn't a big deal.
kyuudou 7y ago
This family of 3 produces 6000 pounds of food a year on 1/10 of an acre that is organic, non-GMO and vegetarian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCmTJkZy0rM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCmTJkZy0rM They have enough surplus to sell to local restaurants to the tune of about 20,000$/year to supplement their income. They use a lot of techniques handed down from antiquity, apparently. Shh, don't tell the eugenicists masquerading as environmentalists and conservationists!

UncleOxidant 7y ago

I'm not planting a garden because I fear shortages, I'm planting it so I don't have to make as many trips to the store.

pvaldes 7y ago
> I'm planting it so I don't have to make as many trips to the store Another correct reason. Is better to spend 2 hours working in the garden than driving to the market. More time to live.
mywittyname 7y ago
I do it because some things are wildly overpriced at the grocery. Like, there's no use in planting cucumbers when they are $0.50 at the grocery. But fresh herbs are like $3 a bunch and berries can be $3-5 a lb, so it can make good financial sense to plant some of these. An herb garden and planter will produce easily $100 worth of herbs over a season for nothing more than 20 minutes of planting, then regular watering and tending. I had so much basil last year that I literally ate it in salad. Berry bushes can be a little more expensive, like $20-50. But they also yield crazy amounts of fruit over the season and grow in like 95% of the USA. It's a good investment, and it's a nice way to get some out doors time everyday.
- Cerium 7y ago
  I focus on foods that are expensive or you simply cannot buy. For example, carrots straight out of the ground taste significantly different than store bought. Despite carrots being one of the cheapest foods I still grow some. Otherwise you nail it with herbs and berries. I estimate a couple basil plants save me at least $50 a year. Another good item I always recommend is to plant the green onion stubs. About 3 square feet of green onions is enough for my family all year.
  - close04 7y ago
    > carrots straight out of the ground taste significantly different than store bought I'd grow a garden today just for the tomatoes. Store bought tomatoes are nothing like the ones I remember growing years ago. But another issue I noticed is that even with the best of soils and care, whatever grows from seeds and seedlings I can procure now still tastes closer to supermarket vegetables than home grown. I'm not sure if the genetic material is to blame or the garden/practices (from my perspective the same as in the past).

telesilla 7y ago

We've started making bread every night for the next day, and I've heard many of my friends are doing this. It's better than what we get in the local bakeries (we don't live in France) and have already discussed continuing to bake now that we figured out some easy tricks. We started here : https://andyljones.com/posts/bread.html https://andyljones.com/posts/bread.html

Loughla 7y ago
Good Christ, how much bread do you eat? We make like one loaf a week.
- senectus1 7y ago
  probably just small loaves. so they always have nice fresh bread...
chrisseaton 7y ago
Do you eat an entire loaf a day? I like making bread sometimes but my family can't eat it quickly enough before it goes stale.
- Abekkus 7y ago
  Freeze it, then toast it.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- dllthomas 7y ago
  > before it goes stale Not a problem! Time for bread pudding or a strata.
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    There's a limit on how much carbohydrates we can reasonably consume.

mikedilger 7y ago

I'm glad people are doing this. Us long-term gardeners, farmers, farm lifestylers and preppers are happy to answer any questions.

commandlinefan 7y ago
> answer any questions well, since you offered... ;) I've heard differing advice on using coffee grounds in gardens: some say you should and some say you shouldn't. Am I doing my garden a disservice dumping each day's pot of coffee grounds into the dirt? I'm trying to grow tomatos, peppers (jalapeno, bell and poblano), cilantro, beans, squash and zucchini.
- dejv 7y ago
  You should add it to the compost, spreading it to ground will probably don't do much as it will oxidize away.
- mikedilger 7y ago
  Coffee grounds are good. Either compost or dig in directly. Many people get confused about pH. Coffee grounds are acidic. But it will have negligable effect on soil pH. Something about buffering capacity (I'm sure I'll be corrected by someone). Same thing with pine needles. They are acidic but will not change soil pH. They won't make much difference right away, but adding organic matter improves the soil over time.
  - mikedilger 7y ago
    Let me explain the pH thing better, now that I've had a think. Soil has a cation exchange capacity (CEC). Some soils have higher capacity then others. Think if it like a numeric count of all the molecular points where a cation could ionically bond. On each of those points, either you have a hydrogen (which makes it acidic) or another cation (which generally makes it alkaline). Those are calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, but also a few others in minute quantities even lead (Pb+2). Ammonium is a cation too. When adding something, it adds more CEC attachment points, but also more cations and more hydrogen. Within just the coffee grounds, many of the CEC points are occupied by hydrogen, so it is acidic. But when you compare the number of CEC points to that in the soil, the amount in your soil overwhelms. The good cations in your soil wont be affected much until you have enormous levels of coffee grounds (like >10% or something, I'd have to calculate it and I haven't). And of course you can always just measure the pH and add cations which will displace the hydrogen (it will bond with the anion). Calcium is cheapest which is why people use agricultural lime. Dolomite will give you some magnesium which will probably produce healthier veggies. Potassium is important but too much will just bulk up the veggies rather than letting them develop more healthfully. Sodium is almost never useful.

big_chungus 7y ago

I hope this convinces people to become more self-sufficient overall and grow a little of their own food. Living farther out from dense urban cores on more land will help, and conveniently, it will also make one less likely to fall ill. Telecommuting will hopefully enable people to live much less densely and avoid something like this recurring at its present scale.

downerending 7y ago
Sprawl is starting to look pretty good right about now.
yardie 7y ago
The climate impact of individuals living in the city vs those living in the suburbs is considerable. More people living away from the city increases deforestation and is a net negative as far as lifestyle is concerned. Telecommuting is a nice option but most businesses don't work that way. I work in the commercial arts world. A lot of it is sensory stimuli and requires paying butts in seats. I can't dropship an experience through Amazon working from bungalow in Chiang Mai.
- asdkjh345fd 7y ago
  >The climate impact of individuals living in the city vs those living in the suburbs is considerable. Yes, but in the opposite direction of what you imply. >More people living away from the city increases deforestation Why would that be the case? Almost all deforestation is for land for farming, not for houses. How much oil is burned growing food and shipping it and storing it and lighting and cooling stores to sell it? >is a net negative as far as lifestyle is concerned. Not everyone values the same materialistic things you do. >I work in the commercial arts world That's a make-work industry that doesn't need to exist. Consider the massive environmental impact of your industry, and how it adds absolutely no value to society at all. Yet you want to stop people from living further away from massive disease spreading urban centers and growing their own food at a cost of zero burned oil?
  - 7y ago

aresant 7y ago

There is not a shortage issue, there is a logistics issue. The logistics issue is that we have commercial and retail supply chains that are Apples & Oranges level different in terms of getting end consumers what they need. For instance: 1) Commercial Offices - why is toilet paper disappearing especially in big cities? It's not the production side that's failing. It's that a huge amount of toilet paper is bought and distributed by commercial contract stockers. The supply chain has NOT adjusted to get commercially stocked toilet paper to retail centers. And making it worse commercial distributors are FORBIDDEN to sell to retail in many cases! So now you're dealing with a supply chain + beurocratic issue. There are Mt. Everest sized stocks of commercial TP sitting in warehouses all over America. 2) Commercial Restaurants - These establishments fed the MAJORITY of office workers in major cities up until 3 weeks ago. Commercial restaurant supply chains are reeling - they have stock sitting on shelves and are trying to figure out how to get it into the retail supply chain with similar beurocratic and logistics issues. There is not a food / grocery shortage and there is unlikely to be a food / grocery shortage in the USA. But it is going to take some time to sort out how to adjust to this new normal. And inevitably as soon as we figure it out the pendulum will swing the other way :)

Scoundreller 7y ago
Agreed 100%. But while you can repackage toilet paper, it’s harder for most people to deal with 10# cans of beans when they would otherwise buy and use 1#. But I guess that bucket of pickles can be rejarred, if they’re available.
01100011 7y ago
You make a good point about the supply chains. There is not a food shortage yet. However, I would not be surprised if there is a shortage of labor intensive food products in a month or so, depending on storage limits. I would not expect shortages of less labor intensive staples like cereal crops and maybe milk. It seems to me that meat packing is fairly labor intensive, so I would not be surprised if meat becomes more scarce at some point. Fresh vegetables seem fairly labor intensive. Fruits can be warehoused for a year or so(AFAIK, at least in the case of apples). Some vegetables are probably more automated(potatoes, corn). I wonder about salad greens though. FWIW, if you're just now considering getting a chest freezer to stockpile frozen goods, good luck. Everyone is sold out.

blisterpeanuts 7y ago

We had 10 pots on the patio last summer, growing cilantro, parsley, green beans, stevia, potatoes, basil, swiss chard, etc. Drip irrigation tubes attached to a timer faucet watered it every morning automatically. At some point I'm going to try to hook in a Pi or Arduino so I can remotely control the irrigation, e.g. if it's raining I won't have to go outside & manually shut it off. We'll be doing that again, and this spring we're also planning to plant a couple of rows of potatoes, carrots, and lettuce. Growing food is not difficult, but it does require some knowledge and understanding of soil pH, pest control, etc. Fortunately there are plenty of how-to videos these days. The food you grow in an organic, chemical free environment tastes fresh and pure, is good for you, educational for the children, and very satisfying. It may not pay for itself in the first couple of years, but over time you'll find that it's well worth it. Freshly grown potatoes taste incredible. We are thinking of getting chickens, but it may or may not happen this spring. Self-sufficiency takes a lot of work, but partial sufficiency is quite attainable for many people. Even if you're in an urban apartment, there are hydroponic devices and grow lamps to help you grow considerable veggies. I suppose we can thank the pot industry for that.

RosanaAnaDana 7y ago
>Growing food is not difficult, but it does require some knowledge I'd push back on the first part of this lightly. Growing some food is not difficult. Growing food effectively however, in quantity and for a long period of time, does require a fair bit of experience and local knowledge that you just can't get in one season. My family gardened heavily growing up, and I've been gardening extensively since my mid 20's (late 30's now), and I would say I only now truly feel like I 'get it' with regards to many aspects of planting, harvesting, timing, and preservation. Prior to the pandemic, my goal this summer was to have my house be 'food-independent' for 3 months of this year. I've revised that goal to try and get to food independence by end of spring and maintain that through the end of fall and into winter. My argument would be that gardening has a very low barrier to entry: literally any one can (and should) have a garden. However, the top skill cap on gardening is very high and does take time to achieve. Its also not something that can be entirely short-cutted through self learning/ study. How you grow depends on where you are and the details of your particular garden. Nothing else but experience will get you there.

tathougies 7y ago

Made a good penny selling my tomato starts this year. More than covered my seed purchases for our garden (not due to coronavirus, I just like gardening and splurged on them this year).

01100011 7y ago

It's great if you can efficiently do it and actually use the results. If you have free time, or kids to help out, I think gardening can be a great hobby and help supplement your nutrition. I think it takes some practice to get right. Fertilization, bug control, selecting varieties, site selection and preparation... My past attempts at gardening have reminded me of the comparative advantage of outsourcing my food supply. Even when my garden has done well, I struggled to eat the results(weeks of non-stop zucchini gets old), and didn't have the time for preservation.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Madmallard 7y ago

Planting your own garden ensures you know what crap is sprayed onto the plants.

ctack 7y ago

Being in lockdown has enabled me to really focus on our vegetable garden this year. Am even getting into weeding which is not normally something I enjoy.

frobozz 7y ago
This. I used to grow veg before commuting and children got in the way. Last time I tried I didn't have the time to keep on top of the weeds. I hope that now we are all at home all the time, I'll be able to do a bit of hoeing any day I like.

vinni2 7y ago

I live in a place where it’s not good weather most of the year. So I tried some indoor garden with grow light somehow it didn’t work the plants seemed to be sick just gave up. Instead I am stocking up some frozen veggies if they really goes short.

koheripbal 7y ago
It takes minimum 1 acre of land to feed an adult. Small gardens make sense for things that are needlessly expensive, like mint, basil, etc... If you have a backyard, the least effort - highest output thing you can plant is a fruit tree.
- PeterisP 7y ago
  If you're hungry, you plant dense staple crops - an acre can yield something like 10 tons of potatoes (or carrots or pumpkins) - if you're not selling produce, then even planting 0.1-0.2 acres of potatoes means you'd have more potatoes than your family needs (because you eat lots of other things). It also takes a lot of labor if you don't have specialized machinery and will take a lot of space in the basement, but it will keep you from starving even from quite small plots of land. A fruit tree is great, but the proper time to plant one is ten years ago.
- asdkjh345fd 7y ago
  >It takes minimum 1 acre of land to feed an adult No it doesn't. Potatoes are 15 million calories an acre at the low end of yields. That's enough to feed 20 people. At the high end you get twice that. How much land it takes to feed a person is entirely dependant on what that person wants to eat. I grow a balanced diet of meat, dairy, eggs, grains, potatoes, fruits and vegetables for five people on two acres, and I'm not using all that space and I choose to grow low efficiency things like berries because we like them.

seanwilson 7y ago

Tangential topic, but does anyone have a good no-nonsense evidence based source for how to make bread and/or sourdough? I've been trying sourdough and it's crazy how many contradictory pieces of advice and explanations you read e.g. if the yeast comes from the initial flour or air, what ratio of flour + water to feed it with, how many times a day you feed the starter, how many times you let the dough prove. It generally indicates to me that the process is very forgiving though (as so many variations work). I would have thought most myths would have been put to bed by now as it should be relatively easy to run cooking experiments if you want to debunk something.

astockwell 7y ago
This was posted in a HN comment not long ago: https://github.com/hendricius/the-bread-code/blob/master/basics/sourdough.md https://github.com/hendricius/the-bread-code/blob/master/bas...
mizzao 7y ago
Here's a google slides deck I put together for how to make good-quality sourdough for a fraction of the effort that the "bread hipsters" go through: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1UoH_BhRWUi0nnGj3uGp47nKoznDLekt5rvzUZZOYDHg/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1UoH_BhRWUi0nnGj3uGp4...
BostonEnginerd 7y ago
Harold McGee's book "On Food and Cooking" has a chapter on bread making. My favorite bread recipe is the No Knead Bread recipe that I saw in The NY Times many years back: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/11376-no-knead-bread https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/11376-no-knead-bread I've never had much success getting a sourdough starter up and running.
cardamomo 7y ago
I highly recommend books by Peter Reinhart. I prefer to bake with whole grains, so I have his "While Grain Breads: New Techniques, Extraordinary Flavor," but anything by him should be great. His work is definitely based in experience and the science of yeast and flour.

taylodl 7y ago

I'm planting a garden because I plant a garden every year. Well, I've been doing it for the past 25 years or so anyway. I've gotten quite good with production. I shudder at the thought of a bunch of noobs going out and starting a garden, but hey, I was a noob once too and I learned. My biggest advice for a beginner is to consider your approach to pest control. That means identifying the pests in your area, both bugs and animals, and whether you want to use chemicals or natural methods. Seeing as how I eat produce I prefer using natural methods but you have to realize they're not as effective and you will suffer losses. Sometimes those losses can be severe - you'd be amazed at the amount of damage squirrels, rabbits, crows, and various beetles can do to a garden in short order! The cool thing is you're going to learn about all kinds of new insects you never even knew existed happily munching away on all your produce! Enjoy!

taylodl 7y ago
This is good advice for dealing with squirrels and rabbits: Irish Spring - https://homeguides.sfgate.com/use-irish-spring-soap-repel-garden-pests-97701.html https://homeguides.sfgate.com/use-irish-spring-soap-repel-ga.... I first heard of this a few years back and it works wonders!
- remarkEon 7y ago
  Can confirm, this works (at least for the rabbits).
aszantu 7y ago
I'd never skip on the opportunity for fresh organic meat and would totally welcome rabbits and squirrels to my garden if I had one xD
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  I'm not sure where you live but I'd think twice (and probably still do it) about eating rabbit from anywhere where people routinely put pesticides on their lawns.

DoreenMichele 7y ago

I'm encouraged to see this. I don't really have anything profound or witty to say, but this makes me feel like we're probably going to be okay.

chris1993 7y ago

Related to this the sales of my gardening app in March were about 100% higher than usual. That's coming off a low base (people don't like paying for apps) but it's a big change. Most of that was in Australia where it's coming into winter so it's not the usual vegetable gardening time. You can't buy vegetable seedlings anywhere at present as they're sold out immediately.

blendo 7y ago

Aspirationally, I’d like to put in the “Three Sisters” (corn, beans, and squash) https://redandhoney.com/milpa-plant-one/ https://redandhoney.com/milpa-plant-one/. What pests should I worry about in Northern California?

mikedilger 7y ago
Some garden plants are sure to attract lots of pests. But corn, beans, and squash are not among the most heavily attacked in my experience. You probably won't have too much of a pest problem. The crops with the most pests (in my experience) are brassicas (white butterfly), tomatoes (everything seems to attack tomatoes!), and beets (slugs). Nasturtiums as a trap crop supposedly can draw away aphids. But remember that nasturtiums attract aphids. So it's a gamble. I guess just don't plant them too close. I've never tried.
dflock 7y ago
Plant them and find out - it's an interesting learning exercise! You'll get slugs and aphids whatever - plant lots of pollinator friendly native flowering plants to attract hoverflies and parasitic wasps - they'll help you out.

Crcarter 7y ago

I run tech at a small farming and gardening supply company in Maine. We’ve seen order volume jump 2-300% in the past few weeks. We’ve done several VPS upgrades to handle the increased traffic, and our order number allocation system has broken down several times recently. Our digital infrastructure is keeping up now, but we’re all still scrambling to keep the staff healthy and safe as we all work to get the orders out the door safely and responsibly.

kyuudou 7y ago
Puts a new twist on "Elastic Beanstalk"

virmundi 7y ago

I’m curious if the Feds will start to crack down on this kind of behavior. Think of the impact on veggie prices once a good portion of Americans are growing their own food. The New Deal already showed the US could come in a demand you pay fines for not buying crops you don’t need. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn

remarkEon 7y ago

I love gardening. Have a lot of really fond memories of playing in my mom's garden (despite terrible allergies) while she was working on it. Tomatoes, rhubarb, raspberries, all sorts of other spices and nectar plants for things like bees and hummingbirds. One summer memory in particular sticks with me, because it was probably my first lesson in the scientific method. Mom's hollyhock plants came down with what ended up being a bad case of rust[1]. We changed the watering routine, fertilizer...nothing worked. This was before google and all that, so we first went to the library and got some gardening books. Went out and compared pictures, but none were exactly the same. Next I clipped some leaves from the plants and we went down to the garden shop a few blocks away and, sure enough, the guy behind the counter (kicking myself I can't remember his name, probably 85 or so with crystal white hair) gave the diagnosis and recommended cutting off all the affected leaves and burning them. Saved the whole lot! Unfortunately, because of work, I live in a city now and that means ... no yard with a garden. The wife also loves gardening. Anyone have any tips for setting something up in an apartment with a balcony? Irrigation is my primary concern. [1] https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/ornamental/flowers/hollyhock/hollyhock-rust-in-gardens.htm https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/ornamental/flowers/hollyhoc...

ornornor 7y ago
You can make self watering pots with 5 gallons buckets, their lid, a pipe, and an old T-shirt. But if you’re not going away, you can simply water every day.

dylanz 7y ago

I received my Permaculture Design Certificate from Bill Mollison, my Permaculture for Aid Workers from Geoff Lawton, designed two properties, both included food forests, and I also like long walks on the beach and sushi. WHO’S HIRING APRIL 2020. Joke aside, gardens not only provide food, I’ve found they act as an anti-depressant and are quite fun to build. One principle of Permaculture is to optimize space to provide for human needs. I feel like the HN community could come up with some cool shit in this space.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

rootsudo 7y ago

Hydroponics are really easy to produce :)

doggodad 7y ago

Here's the list for this year, first growing season after recovering from the Nov 2018 fire: - Red, green & yellow bell peppers - Jalapeños - Okra - Heirloom tomatos - Cherry tomatos - Yellow squash - Zucchini - Watermelon - Sweet corn - Sunflowers Critters we have to deal with: - Black bears - Deer - Crows - Blue jays - Turkeys - Squirrels - Snails - Drug addicts who can't see me or the Glock I'm racking