7 ms·

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).
    - mikepurvis 7y ago
      Which seedlings are you getting? If you're able, skip the ones at the building supply store's garden center and see if you have any heirloom seedling sales/exchanges in your area (though maybe not this year...). The fruit we get from the heirloom plants is head and shoulders above the others— Brandywine and Cosmonaut Volkov are two particularly delicious beefsteak-type "slicing" tomatoes. If you're up for starting your own seedlings, there are also obviously loads of places to order specific varieties of seeds online.
      - outworlder 7y ago
        > If you're up for starting your own seedlings, there are also obviously loads of places to order specific varieties of seeds online. Just be careful where you buy seeds from. I have ordered some lemongrass seeds on Amazon (before learning how to grow more from an adult plant). Those came from China, were seized by customs, sent to a lab, then promptly destroyed. I got a letter in the mail, with the results of the analysis. There was no indication anywhere that they would come from overseas. I shudder to think what would have happened if the supplier also sold something like marijuana and my packet was "contaminated".
        AareyBaba 7y ago
        Lemon grass: go to your local asian market and get lemongrass stalks with the bottom bulb intact. It doesn't need to have roots showing. Place in a jar of water and they will sprout roots in a week or so. Then plant in a pot, it will grow into a big grassy plant.
        outworlder 7y ago
        > It doesn't need to have roots showing Oh wow, I thought it would be worthless without roots! The more you know... Thank you!
        AareyBaba 7y ago
  - downerending 7y ago
    Indeed, good tomatoes seem to be unavailable in stores at any price (even before all of this).
    - toomuchtodo 7y ago
      https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-xpm-2012-jun-30-la-sci-tomato-taste-20120630-story.html https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-xpm-2012-jun-30-la-sci-tom... (Why supermarket tomatoes tend to taste bland [2012])
    - notJim 7y ago
      FWIW, in the summer time you can usually get great tomatoes at farmers markets and produce stands. Though I haven't grown my own yet, so I can't compare.
      - downerending 7y ago
        My parents were freaks about growing their own. Yes, a good road-side stand could be just as good, but depending on where you are, harder to find. But as far as anything in any typical supermarket, well, there's just no comparison. Sometimes the "heirloom" tomatoes are less bad.
    - maxerickson 7y ago
      Of course they don't substitute for fresh, but canned tomatoes are pretty good for a lot of cooking. They are harvested relatively ripe compared to store fresh.
      - downerending 7y ago
        I shall work on my bacon and canned tomato sandwich recipe... ;-) (My wife claims that canned San Marzano tomatoes are the bomb, when cooked tomatoes are needed.)
        Sophistifunk 7y ago
        Be warned that for all intents and purposes "San Marzano" has become a meaningless phrase that people slap on their random tinned tomatoes because they know food network audiences are looking for it.
  - mrob 7y ago
    I recommend chard (a.k.a. Swiss chard, beets bred to produce a lot of greens instead of large roots). Chard is expensive and hard to find in shops because it has short shelf-life once harvested, and because you need to harvest individual leaves as it grows instead of cutting the whole plant at once. But it's easy to grow, and the drawbacks are no problem to a home gardener.
    - kyuudou 7y ago
      It's also nutritionally dense, if I recall correctly. Iceberg lettuce, not so much.
  - y-c-o-m-b 7y ago
    Store bought carrots are almost tasteless. We grew carrots for the first time last year and I was amazed by how much flavor they packed.
    - Cerium 7y ago
      Same thing happened to me. I used to think carrots were useless - just filler for dishes that need some color and volume.
  - UncleOxidant 7y ago
    I grow shallots and garlic as well. Very easy to grow and both kind of pricey in the store.
- CalRobert 7y ago
  Is there a way to mechanize berry harvesting? The time involved in picking them is pretty substantial, at least for this amateur. We picked buckets and buckets of blackberries last year, and had a great time doing it, but it was many hours with the family outside. If I charged my hourly rate for that it would've made for some pricey berries.
  - core-questions 7y ago
    Are you _sure_ you (and your kids) aren't getting more value out of hours with the family outside than any mechanized thing could provide?
    - nitrogen 7y ago
      If those quality hours could be spent playing volleyball or something, why not mechanize?
      - foobarian 7y ago
        If those quality hours could be spent tinkering with a robot and debugging control software, why not mechanize
    - CalRobert 7y ago
      Not at all! We enjoy it greatly. I was speculating on why they cost so much in store. I may have expressed this clumsily though.
  - nkozyra 7y ago
    What am I missing here? I plant blueberries and blackberries and getting a pint at a time takes 5-10 minutes
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- pvaldes 7y ago
  > 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, Correct, but think also that there are other factors. Your herb is $3 in value, but how many rosmary can you eat?. Maybe less than 100 grams could fill your needs for the entire year. Now think that you use the same space for a cucumber. Now you can make it climb and take advantage of vertical space. Cucumbers are $0.5 a piece, but you can pick them when they have like 200g and eat it as many as you want without dying poisoned. You could harvest some Kg from this plant to eat it fresh two days a week, or make your own pickles and store it for the winter. Therefore if your goal is to produce food and there is space only for one, cucumber is a better investment than rosmary or basil because you would buy much more of it in any case. Herbs are a luxury, they play in a different league than potato or onions. Similar case with berries. A single tomato can weight more than the entire raspberry harvest that you could obtain in the same space.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    How about each person grows one herb or vegetable and they trade? For convenience, they can all bring their harvest to a meeting point to exchange
    - pvaldes 7y ago
      Could be a possibility...
- UncleOxidant 7y ago
  I do usually grow cucumbers, but I grow a thin-skinned variety that isn't available in the stores. Taste is great and you can leave the skins on.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
markkanof 7y ago
It's also just a fun activity to do with children to keep them occupied since schools are closed.
dkhenry 7y ago
I'm planting one because its the most relaxing and rewarding thing for me. Something about watching things slowly grow after tending to them for months is very rewarding. Also they don't sell all the kinds of produce you can grow. Heirloom varietals taste so much better then the mass market kinds.
tonyarkles 7y ago
It’s not quite planting season yet here (frost risk until the end of May), but my wife is laid off and wants to do a garden this year to save a little bit of money and have something to do with her time until the entertainment industry is allowed to do stuff again.
- HeyLaughingBoy 7y ago
  You can plant onions now and probably lettuce in a couple of weeks.
  - jfk13 7y ago
    Don't forget potatoes. We're still using some of last year's crop from our garden (and they're so much better fresh from the ground than anything we get from the store).
CalRobert 7y ago
We're not planting because we fear shortages now, but independent of our current predicament there's a nagging feeling in the back of our minds that there _could_ be shortages in our lifetime (most likely climate induced, directly or indirectly) and the time to learn is now, not when the shelves are empty. Also, it's fun and gets us away from screens for a day.
- prawn 7y ago
  I have a garden and consider the same issues as you, but where I live in Australia, the summers are becoming hot enough that many things are difficult to grow. The changing climate could well hurt the amateur as much as the full-time professionals who have time/means to adapt. In the space of 2-3 years, I went from being able to grow countless giant zucchini effortlessly, to now struggling to get almost anything: pollen/stamen are too dry. Tomatoes don't set if over a certain temperature which is now often the case. Even if you cover everything with shadecloth, a heatwave of 40+C can fry plants. Corn this year all failed. I've had one modest zucchini. Most of my 40ish tomato plants went crispy. Five fruit trees failed to develop any fruit. Two that did developed mold patches quickly all the way up the tree. Only a couple of trees did well.
  - pvaldes 7y ago
    Maybe you could try Okra or Eggplants
    - prawn 7y ago
      Tried Japanese eggplants but didn't enjoy them. Don't love eggplants in general either. I might try okra though. We have kids so anything that gets past them is favoured; they eat a lot of spinach and spring onions at least. Potatoes are obviously trivial, but they're so cheap to buy I figure it's barely worth tying up a garden bed for them. Currently growing beans, tomatoes, zucchini, lettuce, spinach, coriander, garlic, carrots, spring onions, rocket/arugula, chilli, chives, strawberries, basil, oregano, snow peas, sugar snaps, etc.
  - dhruvkar 7y ago
miguelrochefort 7y ago
Ever heard of groceries delivery?
doggodad 7y ago
F-ing A. I haven't left the house in three weeks and have a year of basic food (3 months of most things). To me, people who continue at this time the European-style habits of shopping at markets every 1-2 days or even every 1-2 weeks like most Americans are dangerously stupid. Also, after waiting on Instacart customer support for 6 hours today without anyone answering or resolution to missing, damaged goods, and wrong quantities in a single order, even though they're YC alum, I can't honestly use them again (sorry folks). I'd rather make a trip to the markets every 6 months in indirect vent/non-vented goggles and a solid N95 NIOSH mask than pay someone else $60 to buy terrible produce and throw bags onto the ground without any care. PS: We're "autoclaving" the mail at 170 F for 30 minutes to denature any enveloped virus "guests" and letting packages rest in the garage for 4 days before handling them.

> 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).
  - mikepurvis 7y ago
    Which seedlings are you getting? If you're able, skip the ones at the building supply store's garden center and see if you have any heirloom seedling sales/exchanges in your area (though maybe not this year...). The fruit we get from the heirloom plants is head and shoulders above the others— Brandywine and Cosmonaut Volkov are two particularly delicious beefsteak-type "slicing" tomatoes. If you're up for starting your own seedlings, there are also obviously loads of places to order specific varieties of seeds online.
    - outworlder 7y ago
      > If you're up for starting your own seedlings, there are also obviously loads of places to order specific varieties of seeds online. Just be careful where you buy seeds from. I have ordered some lemongrass seeds on Amazon (before learning how to grow more from an adult plant). Those came from China, were seized by customs, sent to a lab, then promptly destroyed. I got a letter in the mail, with the results of the analysis. There was no indication anywhere that they would come from overseas. I shudder to think what would have happened if the supplier also sold something like marijuana and my packet was "contaminated".
      - AareyBaba 7y ago
        Lemon grass: go to your local asian market and get lemongrass stalks with the bottom bulb intact. It doesn't need to have roots showing. Place in a jar of water and they will sprout roots in a week or so. Then plant in a pot, it will grow into a big grassy plant.
        outworlder 7y ago
        > It doesn't need to have roots showing Oh wow, I thought it would be worthless without roots! The more you know... Thank you!
        AareyBaba 7y ago
- downerending 7y ago
  Indeed, good tomatoes seem to be unavailable in stores at any price (even before all of this).
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-xpm-2012-jun-30-la-sci-tomato-taste-20120630-story.html https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-xpm-2012-jun-30-la-sci-tom... (Why supermarket tomatoes tend to taste bland [2012])
  - notJim 7y ago
    FWIW, in the summer time you can usually get great tomatoes at farmers markets and produce stands. Though I haven't grown my own yet, so I can't compare.
    - downerending 7y ago
      My parents were freaks about growing their own. Yes, a good road-side stand could be just as good, but depending on where you are, harder to find. But as far as anything in any typical supermarket, well, there's just no comparison. Sometimes the "heirloom" tomatoes are less bad.
  - maxerickson 7y ago
    Of course they don't substitute for fresh, but canned tomatoes are pretty good for a lot of cooking. They are harvested relatively ripe compared to store fresh.
    - downerending 7y ago
      I shall work on my bacon and canned tomato sandwich recipe... ;-) (My wife claims that canned San Marzano tomatoes are the bomb, when cooked tomatoes are needed.)
      - Sophistifunk 7y ago
        Be warned that for all intents and purposes "San Marzano" has become a meaningless phrase that people slap on their random tinned tomatoes because they know food network audiences are looking for it.
- mrob 7y ago
  I recommend chard (a.k.a. Swiss chard, beets bred to produce a lot of greens instead of large roots). Chard is expensive and hard to find in shops because it has short shelf-life once harvested, and because you need to harvest individual leaves as it grows instead of cutting the whole plant at once. But it's easy to grow, and the drawbacks are no problem to a home gardener.
  - kyuudou 7y ago
    It's also nutritionally dense, if I recall correctly. Iceberg lettuce, not so much.
- y-c-o-m-b 7y ago
  Store bought carrots are almost tasteless. We grew carrots for the first time last year and I was amazed by how much flavor they packed.
  - Cerium 7y ago
    Same thing happened to me. I used to think carrots were useless - just filler for dishes that need some color and volume.
- UncleOxidant 7y ago
  I grow shallots and garlic as well. Very easy to grow and both kind of pricey in the store.
CalRobert 7y ago
Is there a way to mechanize berry harvesting? The time involved in picking them is pretty substantial, at least for this amateur. We picked buckets and buckets of blackberries last year, and had a great time doing it, but it was many hours with the family outside. If I charged my hourly rate for that it would've made for some pricey berries.
- core-questions 7y ago
  Are you _sure_ you (and your kids) aren't getting more value out of hours with the family outside than any mechanized thing could provide?
  - nitrogen 7y ago
    If those quality hours could be spent playing volleyball or something, why not mechanize?
    - foobarian 7y ago
      If those quality hours could be spent tinkering with a robot and debugging control software, why not mechanize
  - CalRobert 7y ago
    Not at all! We enjoy it greatly. I was speculating on why they cost so much in store. I may have expressed this clumsily though.
- nkozyra 7y ago
  What am I missing here? I plant blueberries and blackberries and getting a pint at a time takes 5-10 minutes
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
pvaldes 7y ago
> 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, Correct, but think also that there are other factors. Your herb is $3 in value, but how many rosmary can you eat?. Maybe less than 100 grams could fill your needs for the entire year. Now think that you use the same space for a cucumber. Now you can make it climb and take advantage of vertical space. Cucumbers are $0.5 a piece, but you can pick them when they have like 200g and eat it as many as you want without dying poisoned. You could harvest some Kg from this plant to eat it fresh two days a week, or make your own pickles and store it for the winter. Therefore if your goal is to produce food and there is space only for one, cucumber is a better investment than rosmary or basil because you would buy much more of it in any case. Herbs are a luxury, they play in a different league than potato or onions. Similar case with berries. A single tomato can weight more than the entire raspberry harvest that you could obtain in the same space.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  How about each person grows one herb or vegetable and they trade? For convenience, they can all bring their harvest to a meeting point to exchange
  - pvaldes 7y ago
    Could be a possibility...
UncleOxidant 7y ago
I do usually grow cucumbers, but I grow a thin-skinned variety that isn't available in the stores. Taste is great and you can leave the skins on.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

markkanof 7y ago

It's also just a fun activity to do with children to keep them occupied since schools are closed.

dkhenry 7y ago

I'm planting one because its the most relaxing and rewarding thing for me. Something about watching things slowly grow after tending to them for months is very rewarding. Also they don't sell all the kinds of produce you can grow. Heirloom varietals taste so much better then the mass market kinds.

tonyarkles 7y ago

It’s not quite planting season yet here (frost risk until the end of May), but my wife is laid off and wants to do a garden this year to save a little bit of money and have something to do with her time until the entertainment industry is allowed to do stuff again.

HeyLaughingBoy 7y ago
You can plant onions now and probably lettuce in a couple of weeks.
- jfk13 7y ago
  Don't forget potatoes. We're still using some of last year's crop from our garden (and they're so much better fresh from the ground than anything we get from the store).

CalRobert 7y ago

We're not planting because we fear shortages now, but independent of our current predicament there's a nagging feeling in the back of our minds that there _could_ be shortages in our lifetime (most likely climate induced, directly or indirectly) and the time to learn is now, not when the shelves are empty. Also, it's fun and gets us away from screens for a day.

prawn 7y ago
I have a garden and consider the same issues as you, but where I live in Australia, the summers are becoming hot enough that many things are difficult to grow. The changing climate could well hurt the amateur as much as the full-time professionals who have time/means to adapt. In the space of 2-3 years, I went from being able to grow countless giant zucchini effortlessly, to now struggling to get almost anything: pollen/stamen are too dry. Tomatoes don't set if over a certain temperature which is now often the case. Even if you cover everything with shadecloth, a heatwave of 40+C can fry plants. Corn this year all failed. I've had one modest zucchini. Most of my 40ish tomato plants went crispy. Five fruit trees failed to develop any fruit. Two that did developed mold patches quickly all the way up the tree. Only a couple of trees did well.
- pvaldes 7y ago
  Maybe you could try Okra or Eggplants
  - prawn 7y ago
    Tried Japanese eggplants but didn't enjoy them. Don't love eggplants in general either. I might try okra though. We have kids so anything that gets past them is favoured; they eat a lot of spinach and spring onions at least. Potatoes are obviously trivial, but they're so cheap to buy I figure it's barely worth tying up a garden bed for them. Currently growing beans, tomatoes, zucchini, lettuce, spinach, coriander, garlic, carrots, spring onions, rocket/arugula, chilli, chives, strawberries, basil, oregano, snow peas, sugar snaps, etc.
- dhruvkar 7y ago

miguelrochefort 7y ago

Ever heard of groceries delivery?

doggodad 7y ago

F-ing A. I haven't left the house in three weeks and have a year of basic food (3 months of most things). To me, people who continue at this time the European-style habits of shopping at markets every 1-2 days or even every 1-2 weeks like most Americans are dangerously stupid. Also, after waiting on Instacart customer support for 6 hours today without anyone answering or resolution to missing, damaged goods, and wrong quantities in a single order, even though they're YC alum, I can't honestly use them again (sorry folks). I'd rather make a trip to the markets every 6 months in indirect vent/non-vented goggles and a solid N95 NIOSH mask than pay someone else $60 to buy terrible produce and throw bags onto the ground without any care. PS: We're "autoclaving" the mail at 170 F for 30 minutes to denature any enveloped virus "guests" and letting packages rest in the garage for 4 days before handling them.