11 ms·

Fruit Trenches: Cultivating Subtropical Plants in Freezing Temperatures

264 points by Luc 7y ago

scrumbledober 7y ago
I oddly really want to do this, but I live in California so that would be quite pointless and most likely detrimental.
- datnoblesavage 7y ago
  Unless you want to grow plants that fare better in colder climates. Just cover them over in the middle of summer and make sure they have some sort of cool air flow through the trenches.
- 205guy 7y ago
  The Forestiere Underground Gardens in Frenso are over 100 years old. The trees grow in wells connected by shallow tunnels. It does look more like a Tatooine underground house than a garden, but still neat. It's open for tours in normal times: http://www.undergroundgardens.com/ http://www.undergroundgardens.com/
mrfusion 7y ago
If the temps are below 0f, it seems like none of this is preventing your free from dropping below freezing. Maybe it’s really more about the varieties they cultivated. With modern crisper I bet you could Make some amazing frui trees.
- netjiro 7y ago
  Join together with some fellow biohackers and make a fun transgenic plant. It's not that expensive or difficult, if you choose the plant well. Then you're a proud God of GMO with your intellectual spawn multiplying to (probably not) conquer the earth... But some plants are very tricky and costly. I remember making my first transgenetic GMO in an afternoon back in the day.
scottlocklin 7y ago
There was a similar article shared here a few months ago on Fruit Walls: https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/12/fruit-walls-urban-farming.html https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/12/fruit-walls-urban-fa...
- cardamomo 7y ago
  The fruit walls article a perennial favorite on HN.[0] (Pun intended.) [0] https://hn.algolia.com/?q=fruit+walls https://hn.algolia.com/?q=fruit+walls
artificialLimbs 7y ago
Super awesome! I imagine that most of the time, you don't even need to dig giant trenches, though. Sepp Holzer grows citrus in the freezing alps above ground. Their average temp is 5C. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GMXqgQIU9c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GMXqgQIU9c
- datnoblesavage 7y ago
  Sepp <3
- VBprogrammer 7y ago
  Sepp Holzer's farm is amazing. I think however it's unlikely that he's truly able to grow citrus fruit at scale even using all of his near magical techniques. Where he is able to grow citrus fruit is taking advantage of very small micro climates with ponds buffering temperatures and acting to reflect evening sun along with perfect orientation etc.
  - hutzlibu 7y ago
    Permaculture in general sadly does not produce at scale at all and scaling up is very labour intensive.
    - floatrock 7y ago
      The average car in the US has a 120 horsepower engine, less if it's a compact, more if it's a truck or SUV. Think about that for a second -- your garage is housing the equivalent of 120 horses. How much "labor" is that? Now, we don't really notice that when everything is working well and the gasoline keeps flowing. There are calculations that figure a gallon of oil has something like two weeks of 8-hour/day manual labor embedded in it, energy-wise (using the cute term "energy slaves"). Synthentic fertilizer is basically spending a crap-ton of energy to fix nitrogen -- google "haber bosch energy". Especially with the covid supply chain disruptions going on now, though, I've been rethinking what "scale" means or if it's even the right metric to be going for. Permaculture has been really interesting to me last few weeks because it doesn't try to go for "scale" per se (though there are claims that properly done it's more productive per acre), but rather it tries to cycle as many energy flows as possible. So if your yardstick is "how many bushels of corn per acre can I grow?" then yeah, permaculture doesn't 'scale'. But if your yardstick is "how do I get the most output while minimizing energy inputs" and accept that outputs aren't necessarily a monocrop but can be complementary outputs (corn + legumes + animals + fertilizer), then it starts to get really interesting. I'm a developer not a farmer, but the systems-level thinking I've seen in the permaculture community is extremely fascinating. There's 'labor' embedded everywhere, the question is are you counting it.
paypalcust83 7y ago
Climate-controlled cultivation will likely become a necessity for food production as climate change intensifies. Spain, South Africa, many Middle Eastern and other countries are already heavily reliant on greenhouses. Also given that megadroughts, floods, and hurricanes are likely to be the new normal, sufficient capacities of solar-powered desalination will be important to sustain food production levels. My main immediate concern with climate change is that greater numbers of and more intense storms will destroy infrastructure and food production, leading to wars and/or pan migration.
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  Problem is that greenhouses are the most laborious. Can’t drive a tractor through to plant and pick everything.
  - blaser-waffle 7y ago
    Incredibly laborious. Pretty much everything has to be done by hand -- watering, fertilizing, etc. Totally worth it for specialized plants, or in certain climates, but you can't scale them to feed 6-going-on-7 billion people.
    - yesbabyyes 7y ago
      There are in fact about 7.8 billion of us. I believe we will have to change from this <1% of the population growing all the food. Growing part of your own food is a good idea. We should all plant some potatoes this year – a not so laborious way of producing nutritious food.
      - pjc50 7y ago
        Kind of Maoist and inefficient to have all your specially trained valuable first world labour do manual work, badly.
        jfk13 7y ago
James_Henry 7y ago
The soviet's probably would have liked this man's geothermal greenhouse which is a modern version of their trenches: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZghkt5m1uY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZghkt5m1uY Also, I'm wondering if the citrus grown in Russia ended up ripening in fall rather than in winter or whether they had to harvest the fruit in the middle of the winter. Also, I'm not sure how citrus would work being dug up every winter. Did these trees ripen in the spring? This is all fascinating and something I'd love to try in the US. I'd bet the premium on locally grown foods isn't enough to sustain a northern citrus farm, but it could be a good hobby.
datnoblesavage 7y ago
Thanks for the heads up. Have you got the printed books version? If so, are they good?
derefr 7y ago
I’ve often thought about the fact that most food into places like Barrow, Alaska is flown in, and wondered whether it would be practical to set up local infrastructure like this to grow food locally (with “practical” meaning “the CapEx of doing so would be repaid in logistical OpEx saved over a small number of years.”)
- allannienhuis 7y ago
  food security in times of disaster or emergency are other good reasons for investing in local food supply. Also, diversification of the economy. But ya, it needs to make some economic sense too. We grow a lot of food in hothouses in Canada...
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    I would love to see the math of geothermal greenhouses powered by renewables versus the carbon footprint of air freight of food. As renewables drive down the cost of electricity, the economics continually shift towards local production versus import. Outside of Alberta, most of Canada's electrical generation is very low carbon (nuclear and hydro) per electricitymap.org.
    - allannienhuis 7y ago
      ya, but I think a lot of commercial greenhouses are heated by natural gas because of lower cost. A quick google found some really interesting stuff regarding alternative (geothermal, biomass) heating specifically designed for greenhouses: https://www.greenhousecanada.com/topic/structures-equipment/heating/ https://www.greenhousecanada.com/topic/structures-equipment/...
      - toomuchtodo 7y ago
        Current state, yes! But something we need to get away from (unless methane from bioreactors or landfills is used, in which case burning it is the best form of disposal).
    - 7y ago
dharma1 7y ago
I grow a few things in a (relatively small) suburban garden in London. My experience so far with fruit normally associated with warmer climates: Grapes - grow very well outside, lots of tasty fruit, sensitive to mildew Figs - grow well outside, fast, but not much fruit yet Citrus (lemon, lime and kafir lime) - Any frost is damaging, can only grow in pots and bring in during winter. Grows slowly and doesn't produce much fruit Olives - grow very well outside, don't produce much fruit Stauntonia - grow very well outside, no fruit so far Hardy kiwi - grows well outside, produces some fruit Normal kiwi - grow very slowly, no fruit, sensitive to frost I would like to try pomegranates, I've seen some people grow them in London The best croppers in my garden by far are non-tropical fruit - cherry and apple trees. I think polytunnels (maybe with some kind of light transmitting insulation) and geothermal heating would be the way to go these days in northern climates if trying to grow cold sensitive fruit in larger amounts.
- jjgreen 7y ago
  I am jealous of your garden
  - dharma1 7y ago
    All you need is a bit of outside space, and time. Takes a few years for fruit trees to grow
- tathougies 7y ago
  The Europeans also used 'fruit walls'. I'm thinking of setting up one in Portland. Basically a brick wall that you espalier a fruit tree to. You redirect your chimney floo or hot water pipes through the wall to keep it warmer than the surroundings in the winter. I'm hoping to be able to grow frost-sensitive hardy citrus. https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/12/fruit-walls-urban-farming.html https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/12/fruit-walls-urban-fa...
  - koheripbal 7y ago
    The problem is that neither your chimney nor hot water pipes are continually piping heat. So the transient effect of the warm/cold cycles would likely make frostbite even worse. ...and leaving those heat sources on continually... well... that's very energy inefficient, to say the least.
sunsure 7y ago
This retire engineer in Nebraska has nice setup. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4O3ifR-3zvs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4O3ifR-3zvs
- goda90 7y ago
  I wonder if these kinds of designs can handle smaller scales. I'd love to have such a greenhouse on my 0.3 acre lot in Wisconsin. Edit: I found this guy's store page[0]. This is what they say about size: "Greenhouse in the Snow kits are priced by the lineal foot and are available in 6' increments beginning at 30'. The greenhouses are 17' wide. Most kits we sell are 78' to 102' long. Greenhouses less than 60' long are less cost effective than bigger greenhouses." I imagine smaller greenhouses like this are still possible though. [0]https://greenhouseinthesnow.com/shop https://greenhouseinthesnow.com/shop
  - saltcured 7y ago
    Bear in mind that the ratio of the exterior surface to the volume of the controlled space gets worse and worse as you make it smaller. And that this ratio is what helps make it cost effective not just in material costs but in operating costs, since heat transfer is across that surface...
datnoblesavage 7y ago
I wonder if hackernews mods keep tabs on people carpet downvoting?
- nkurz 7y ago
  They do, and are usually pretty responsive to questions like this if you send them email at hn@ycombinator.com. I don't know if that's what's happening here, though. For example, despite having a copy of one of Holzer's books next to my bed, I downvoted your "Sepp [heart]" comment. It's just not the right comment for HN: no context, and emoticons are really frowned on. If instead you'd written a few sentences explaining why you admire him, so that people who don't know who he is could understand, you'd probably have gotten a bunch of upvotes. I'm sorry if it feels like people are attacking you. It's really not, instead it's really about trying to keep the site as good as it currently is. Almost all comment heavy sites of this age have declined to be unusable by now, but because of the different moderation approach, HN manages to (at least occasionally) still have quality discussion.
gdubs 7y ago
Wow, this is amazing. The trenches are super cool, but there’s a wealth of info in the article, especially around how they arrived at creeping varieties, and how they cold-hardened lemons by painstakingly moving each successive generation’s seeds further and further north. Really interesting piece.
- chris1993 7y ago
  Very interesting reliance on epigenetics to get cold adapted varieties
kleton 7y ago
It frosted only one or two days this winter in Odessa. So maybe in a few years, you will be able to grow mandarins above ground without protection.
jungletime 7y ago
The most hardy citrus is the ornamental Flying Dragon Citrus, which produces fruit, but the fruit is poor tasting. But can be grown in zone 6 Niagara Falls http://www.eattheweeds.com/hardy-orange/ http://www.eattheweeds.com/hardy-orange/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold-hardy_citrus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold-hardy_citrus The most tropical fruit that can be grown in cold climates in North America is the Paw Paw. (Survives -30 degrees) "It belongs to the genus Asimina in the same plant family (the Annonaceae) as the custard-apple, cherimoya, sweetsop, ylang-ylang and soursop."
- pvaldes 7y ago
  Flying dragon or Poncirus is a must if you want to grow Citrus in cold places. Is the only decicuous Citrus. The fruits are non culinary, but is an excelent rootstock In any case the "lemon" of cold places is Chaenomeles (and not all are able to bear fruit).
hirundo 7y ago
"Training small citrus plants was key to extending their cultivation across all regions of the Black Sea coast, where until then it had been impossible. This was achieved by pruning and guiding citrus plants into a creeping form, which reduced their height to a mere 25 cm." People complain about cubicle farms, but there's so much we can do to train workers to be productive in them, if we start them young enough.
- the8472 7y ago
  Finally an industrial application of bonsaikittens.
- hyperpallium 7y ago
  > pruning Do IT workers really need legs?
  - hutzlibu 7y ago
    Of course not, if you can automate feeding. Sadly the current armless interfaces are not efficient enough, otherwise there is a big potential there as well. But the bonsai approach if applied young enough, should give efficiency boosts, too.
  - myself248 7y ago
    Y'all need to watch Sorry To Bother You. No spoilers.
- pvaldes 7y ago
  We should notice than a 25cm height Citrus is not necessarily a 25cm wide Citrus. Could extend for a few meters. In the end is the opposite to a cubicle. Creeping plants are space hogs.
georgeoliver 7y ago
Where I grew up (41.3 deg N, on the Atlantic coast) I was always amazed by our neighbor, who would bury his ~15 foot tall fig tree every year to protect it from freezing. For some reason in my child mind it seemed to defy the laws of nature, though of course it was quite the opposite!
- andys627 7y ago
  The whole thing?
  - georgeoliver 7y ago
    Yes, he would tie it down and create a kind of berm along its length.
- youeseh 7y ago
  How did he exhume it in the Spring?
  - brohee 7y ago
    https://www.instructables.com/id/Un-Bury-a-Fig-Tree/ https://www.instructables.com/id/Un-Bury-a-Fig-Tree/
- DeathArrow 7y ago
  Where I live in Eastern Europe (44°26′7″), we have acclimatized fig trees. And we have temperatures as low as -20C or even -25C (-4 and -13 Fahrenheit).
  - georgeoliver 7y ago
    My parents who still live in the same house do have a small fig tree they don't bury, and my mother's parents a hundred miles south had a larger one in their backyard. I don't know if burying fig trees in that climate is necessary to be honest, maybe it was just a practice my neighbor brought with him (he was Italian as well).
edaemon 7y ago
The University of Minnesota has done a bit of research and put out some guidance on constructing deep winter greenhouses: https://extension.umn.edu/growing-systems/deep-winter-greenhouses https://extension.umn.edu/growing-systems/deep-winter-greenh... They use a similar method in that thermal mass is used to store energy, but instead of trapping the heat with soil/straw for a season the daily heat is stored in masonry, stone, or water. On sunny winter days it can be -20°F outside while the greenhouse is 80°F, though a string of dark days can mean that supplemental heating is needed.
mooreds 7y ago
An alternative is greenhouses. These folks have been growing tropical plants at 7200 feet in the Rocky mountains for years using inflatable greenhouses: https://crmpi.org/ https://crmpi.org/
loeg 7y ago
Some of these techniques are still common to produce hardy plants or increase yields with low land use. "Creeping" is also called low-stress training, and the extreme form is sometimes colloquially called "screen of green." SoG is so-called because you essentially put a net at a fixed height and force the plants leaves to all be at that exact height, attempting to maximize photosynthesis efficiency. (Really hot peppers varieties take some babying to thrive. These techniques are also popular in the marijuana community.)
PcMojo 7y ago
[video] Nebraska retired mailman uses low cost geothermal to grow citrus in -20F snowy weather -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZD_3_gsgsnk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZD_3_gsgsnk
aaron695 7y ago
Fruit Trenches are just an attempt at cheap walls. There is no geothermal going on here. I'm not sure if it would work out cheaper. Certainly not for a business. But even for a hobbyist possibly not. I'm not sure it's even interesting as a display garden. The bio-hacking (breeding) of plants is cool though.
legulere 7y ago
Reminds me a bit of the citrus gardens in Limone sul Garda. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limone_sul_Garda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limone_sul_Garda

264 points by Luc 7y ago

scrumbledober 7y ago

I oddly really want to do this, but I live in California so that would be quite pointless and most likely detrimental.

datnoblesavage 7y ago
Unless you want to grow plants that fare better in colder climates. Just cover them over in the middle of summer and make sure they have some sort of cool air flow through the trenches.
205guy 7y ago
The Forestiere Underground Gardens in Frenso are over 100 years old. The trees grow in wells connected by shallow tunnels. It does look more like a Tatooine underground house than a garden, but still neat. It's open for tours in normal times: http://www.undergroundgardens.com/ http://www.undergroundgardens.com/

mrfusion 7y ago

If the temps are below 0f, it seems like none of this is preventing your free from dropping below freezing. Maybe it’s really more about the varieties they cultivated. With modern crisper I bet you could Make some amazing frui trees.

netjiro 7y ago
Join together with some fellow biohackers and make a fun transgenic plant. It's not that expensive or difficult, if you choose the plant well. Then you're a proud God of GMO with your intellectual spawn multiplying to (probably not) conquer the earth... But some plants are very tricky and costly. I remember making my first transgenetic GMO in an afternoon back in the day.

scottlocklin 7y ago

There was a similar article shared here a few months ago on Fruit Walls: https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/12/fruit-walls-urban-farming.html https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/12/fruit-walls-urban-fa...

cardamomo 7y ago
The fruit walls article a perennial favorite on HN.[0] (Pun intended.) [0] https://hn.algolia.com/?q=fruit+walls https://hn.algolia.com/?q=fruit+walls

artificialLimbs 7y ago

Super awesome! I imagine that most of the time, you don't even need to dig giant trenches, though. Sepp Holzer grows citrus in the freezing alps above ground. Their average temp is 5C. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GMXqgQIU9c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GMXqgQIU9c

datnoblesavage 7y ago
Sepp <3
VBprogrammer 7y ago
Sepp Holzer's farm is amazing. I think however it's unlikely that he's truly able to grow citrus fruit at scale even using all of his near magical techniques. Where he is able to grow citrus fruit is taking advantage of very small micro climates with ponds buffering temperatures and acting to reflect evening sun along with perfect orientation etc.
- hutzlibu 7y ago
  Permaculture in general sadly does not produce at scale at all and scaling up is very labour intensive.
  - floatrock 7y ago
    The average car in the US has a 120 horsepower engine, less if it's a compact, more if it's a truck or SUV. Think about that for a second -- your garage is housing the equivalent of 120 horses. How much "labor" is that? Now, we don't really notice that when everything is working well and the gasoline keeps flowing. There are calculations that figure a gallon of oil has something like two weeks of 8-hour/day manual labor embedded in it, energy-wise (using the cute term "energy slaves"). Synthentic fertilizer is basically spending a crap-ton of energy to fix nitrogen -- google "haber bosch energy". Especially with the covid supply chain disruptions going on now, though, I've been rethinking what "scale" means or if it's even the right metric to be going for. Permaculture has been really interesting to me last few weeks because it doesn't try to go for "scale" per se (though there are claims that properly done it's more productive per acre), but rather it tries to cycle as many energy flows as possible. So if your yardstick is "how many bushels of corn per acre can I grow?" then yeah, permaculture doesn't 'scale'. But if your yardstick is "how do I get the most output while minimizing energy inputs" and accept that outputs aren't necessarily a monocrop but can be complementary outputs (corn + legumes + animals + fertilizer), then it starts to get really interesting. I'm a developer not a farmer, but the systems-level thinking I've seen in the permaculture community is extremely fascinating. There's 'labor' embedded everywhere, the question is are you counting it.

paypalcust83 7y ago

Climate-controlled cultivation will likely become a necessity for food production as climate change intensifies. Spain, South Africa, many Middle Eastern and other countries are already heavily reliant on greenhouses. Also given that megadroughts, floods, and hurricanes are likely to be the new normal, sufficient capacities of solar-powered desalination will be important to sustain food production levels. My main immediate concern with climate change is that greater numbers of and more intense storms will destroy infrastructure and food production, leading to wars and/or pan migration.

Scoundreller 7y ago
Problem is that greenhouses are the most laborious. Can’t drive a tractor through to plant and pick everything.
- blaser-waffle 7y ago
  Incredibly laborious. Pretty much everything has to be done by hand -- watering, fertilizing, etc. Totally worth it for specialized plants, or in certain climates, but you can't scale them to feed 6-going-on-7 billion people.
  - yesbabyyes 7y ago
    There are in fact about 7.8 billion of us. I believe we will have to change from this <1% of the population growing all the food. Growing part of your own food is a good idea. We should all plant some potatoes this year – a not so laborious way of producing nutritious food.
    - pjc50 7y ago
      Kind of Maoist and inefficient to have all your specially trained valuable first world labour do manual work, badly.
      - jfk13 7y ago

James_Henry 7y ago

The soviet's probably would have liked this man's geothermal greenhouse which is a modern version of their trenches: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZghkt5m1uY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZghkt5m1uY Also, I'm wondering if the citrus grown in Russia ended up ripening in fall rather than in winter or whether they had to harvest the fruit in the middle of the winter. Also, I'm not sure how citrus would work being dug up every winter. Did these trees ripen in the spring? This is all fascinating and something I'd love to try in the US. I'd bet the premium on locally grown foods isn't enough to sustain a northern citrus farm, but it could be a good hobby.

datnoblesavage 7y ago

Thanks for the heads up. Have you got the printed books version? If so, are they good?

derefr 7y ago

I’ve often thought about the fact that most food into places like Barrow, Alaska is flown in, and wondered whether it would be practical to set up local infrastructure like this to grow food locally (with “practical” meaning “the CapEx of doing so would be repaid in logistical OpEx saved over a small number of years.”)

allannienhuis 7y ago
food security in times of disaster or emergency are other good reasons for investing in local food supply. Also, diversification of the economy. But ya, it needs to make some economic sense too. We grow a lot of food in hothouses in Canada...
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  I would love to see the math of geothermal greenhouses powered by renewables versus the carbon footprint of air freight of food. As renewables drive down the cost of electricity, the economics continually shift towards local production versus import. Outside of Alberta, most of Canada's electrical generation is very low carbon (nuclear and hydro) per electricitymap.org.
  - allannienhuis 7y ago
    ya, but I think a lot of commercial greenhouses are heated by natural gas because of lower cost. A quick google found some really interesting stuff regarding alternative (geothermal, biomass) heating specifically designed for greenhouses: https://www.greenhousecanada.com/topic/structures-equipment/heating/ https://www.greenhousecanada.com/topic/structures-equipment/...
    - toomuchtodo 7y ago
      Current state, yes! But something we need to get away from (unless methane from bioreactors or landfills is used, in which case burning it is the best form of disposal).
  - 7y ago

dharma1 7y ago

I grow a few things in a (relatively small) suburban garden in London. My experience so far with fruit normally associated with warmer climates: Grapes - grow very well outside, lots of tasty fruit, sensitive to mildew Figs - grow well outside, fast, but not much fruit yet Citrus (lemon, lime and kafir lime) - Any frost is damaging, can only grow in pots and bring in during winter. Grows slowly and doesn't produce much fruit Olives - grow very well outside, don't produce much fruit Stauntonia - grow very well outside, no fruit so far Hardy kiwi - grows well outside, produces some fruit Normal kiwi - grow very slowly, no fruit, sensitive to frost I would like to try pomegranates, I've seen some people grow them in London The best croppers in my garden by far are non-tropical fruit - cherry and apple trees. I think polytunnels (maybe with some kind of light transmitting insulation) and geothermal heating would be the way to go these days in northern climates if trying to grow cold sensitive fruit in larger amounts.

jjgreen 7y ago
I am jealous of your garden
- dharma1 7y ago
  All you need is a bit of outside space, and time. Takes a few years for fruit trees to grow
tathougies 7y ago
The Europeans also used 'fruit walls'. I'm thinking of setting up one in Portland. Basically a brick wall that you espalier a fruit tree to. You redirect your chimney floo or hot water pipes through the wall to keep it warmer than the surroundings in the winter. I'm hoping to be able to grow frost-sensitive hardy citrus. https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/12/fruit-walls-urban-farming.html https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/12/fruit-walls-urban-fa...
- koheripbal 7y ago
  The problem is that neither your chimney nor hot water pipes are continually piping heat. So the transient effect of the warm/cold cycles would likely make frostbite even worse. ...and leaving those heat sources on continually... well... that's very energy inefficient, to say the least.

sunsure 7y ago

This retire engineer in Nebraska has nice setup. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4O3ifR-3zvs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4O3ifR-3zvs

goda90 7y ago
I wonder if these kinds of designs can handle smaller scales. I'd love to have such a greenhouse on my 0.3 acre lot in Wisconsin. Edit: I found this guy's store page[0]. This is what they say about size: "Greenhouse in the Snow kits are priced by the lineal foot and are available in 6' increments beginning at 30'. The greenhouses are 17' wide. Most kits we sell are 78' to 102' long. Greenhouses less than 60' long are less cost effective than bigger greenhouses." I imagine smaller greenhouses like this are still possible though. [0]https://greenhouseinthesnow.com/shop https://greenhouseinthesnow.com/shop
- saltcured 7y ago
  Bear in mind that the ratio of the exterior surface to the volume of the controlled space gets worse and worse as you make it smaller. And that this ratio is what helps make it cost effective not just in material costs but in operating costs, since heat transfer is across that surface...

datnoblesavage 7y ago

I wonder if hackernews mods keep tabs on people carpet downvoting?

nkurz 7y ago
They do, and are usually pretty responsive to questions like this if you send them email at hn@ycombinator.com. I don't know if that's what's happening here, though. For example, despite having a copy of one of Holzer's books next to my bed, I downvoted your "Sepp [heart]" comment. It's just not the right comment for HN: no context, and emoticons are really frowned on. If instead you'd written a few sentences explaining why you admire him, so that people who don't know who he is could understand, you'd probably have gotten a bunch of upvotes. I'm sorry if it feels like people are attacking you. It's really not, instead it's really about trying to keep the site as good as it currently is. Almost all comment heavy sites of this age have declined to be unusable by now, but because of the different moderation approach, HN manages to (at least occasionally) still have quality discussion.

gdubs 7y ago

Wow, this is amazing. The trenches are super cool, but there’s a wealth of info in the article, especially around how they arrived at creeping varieties, and how they cold-hardened lemons by painstakingly moving each successive generation’s seeds further and further north. Really interesting piece.

chris1993 7y ago
Very interesting reliance on epigenetics to get cold adapted varieties

kleton 7y ago

It frosted only one or two days this winter in Odessa. So maybe in a few years, you will be able to grow mandarins above ground without protection.

jungletime 7y ago

The most hardy citrus is the ornamental Flying Dragon Citrus, which produces fruit, but the fruit is poor tasting. But can be grown in zone 6 Niagara Falls http://www.eattheweeds.com/hardy-orange/ http://www.eattheweeds.com/hardy-orange/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold-hardy_citrus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold-hardy_citrus The most tropical fruit that can be grown in cold climates in North America is the Paw Paw. (Survives -30 degrees) "It belongs to the genus Asimina in the same plant family (the Annonaceae) as the custard-apple, cherimoya, sweetsop, ylang-ylang and soursop."

pvaldes 7y ago
Flying dragon or Poncirus is a must if you want to grow Citrus in cold places. Is the only decicuous Citrus. The fruits are non culinary, but is an excelent rootstock In any case the "lemon" of cold places is Chaenomeles (and not all are able to bear fruit).

hirundo 7y ago

"Training small citrus plants was key to extending their cultivation across all regions of the Black Sea coast, where until then it had been impossible. This was achieved by pruning and guiding citrus plants into a creeping form, which reduced their height to a mere 25 cm." People complain about cubicle farms, but there's so much we can do to train workers to be productive in them, if we start them young enough.

the8472 7y ago
Finally an industrial application of bonsaikittens.
hyperpallium 7y ago
> pruning Do IT workers really need legs?
- hutzlibu 7y ago
  Of course not, if you can automate feeding. Sadly the current armless interfaces are not efficient enough, otherwise there is a big potential there as well. But the bonsai approach if applied young enough, should give efficiency boosts, too.
- myself248 7y ago
  Y'all need to watch Sorry To Bother You. No spoilers.
pvaldes 7y ago
We should notice than a 25cm height Citrus is not necessarily a 25cm wide Citrus. Could extend for a few meters. In the end is the opposite to a cubicle. Creeping plants are space hogs.

georgeoliver 7y ago

Where I grew up (41.3 deg N, on the Atlantic coast) I was always amazed by our neighbor, who would bury his ~15 foot tall fig tree every year to protect it from freezing. For some reason in my child mind it seemed to defy the laws of nature, though of course it was quite the opposite!

andys627 7y ago
The whole thing?
- georgeoliver 7y ago
  Yes, he would tie it down and create a kind of berm along its length.
youeseh 7y ago
How did he exhume it in the Spring?
- brohee 7y ago
  https://www.instructables.com/id/Un-Bury-a-Fig-Tree/ https://www.instructables.com/id/Un-Bury-a-Fig-Tree/
DeathArrow 7y ago
Where I live in Eastern Europe (44°26′7″), we have acclimatized fig trees. And we have temperatures as low as -20C or even -25C (-4 and -13 Fahrenheit).
- georgeoliver 7y ago
  My parents who still live in the same house do have a small fig tree they don't bury, and my mother's parents a hundred miles south had a larger one in their backyard. I don't know if burying fig trees in that climate is necessary to be honest, maybe it was just a practice my neighbor brought with him (he was Italian as well).

edaemon 7y ago

The University of Minnesota has done a bit of research and put out some guidance on constructing deep winter greenhouses: https://extension.umn.edu/growing-systems/deep-winter-greenhouses https://extension.umn.edu/growing-systems/deep-winter-greenh... They use a similar method in that thermal mass is used to store energy, but instead of trapping the heat with soil/straw for a season the daily heat is stored in masonry, stone, or water. On sunny winter days it can be -20°F outside while the greenhouse is 80°F, though a string of dark days can mean that supplemental heating is needed.

mooreds 7y ago

An alternative is greenhouses. These folks have been growing tropical plants at 7200 feet in the Rocky mountains for years using inflatable greenhouses: https://crmpi.org/ https://crmpi.org/

loeg 7y ago

Some of these techniques are still common to produce hardy plants or increase yields with low land use. "Creeping" is also called low-stress training, and the extreme form is sometimes colloquially called "screen of green." SoG is so-called because you essentially put a net at a fixed height and force the plants leaves to all be at that exact height, attempting to maximize photosynthesis efficiency. (Really hot peppers varieties take some babying to thrive. These techniques are also popular in the marijuana community.)

PcMojo 7y ago

[video] Nebraska retired mailman uses low cost geothermal to grow citrus in -20F snowy weather -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZD_3_gsgsnk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZD_3_gsgsnk

aaron695 7y ago

Fruit Trenches are just an attempt at cheap walls. There is no geothermal going on here. I'm not sure if it would work out cheaper. Certainly not for a business. But even for a hobbyist possibly not. I'm not sure it's even interesting as a display garden. The bio-hacking (breeding) of plants is cool though.

legulere 7y ago

Reminds me a bit of the citrus gardens in Limone sul Garda. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limone_sul_Garda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limone_sul_Garda