4 ms·

how can i architect my own vertical garden that "covers the ground" of the diet I am used to?

vkou 6y ago
Step one is to quit your day job. Step two is to put in ~12 hours a day, 7 days a week of work into homesteading. Step three is to dip on your savings to buy farming equipment, consumable inputs, and groceries for the remaining half of your food that you won't be able to grow yourself. If you'd like to try before you buy, my parents' homestead up in Canada could always use another pair of hands. Money's a bit tight, but they can pay you with food and a couch to sleep on. You'll have to share the room with ~15-30 baby chicks, though. You'll quickly get used to the smell. I understand that this won't give you a vertical garden, but unlike a vertical garden, it will go most of the way to meeting your daily caloric and nutritional needs.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  > Money's a bit tight, but they can pay you with food and a couch to sleep on. Even if he wanted to work for free, unless he's in Olympic-athlete shape and mentally tough, it's still a raw deal for the farm if they can get migrant workers instead. Most Americans who've been here more than one generation don't make it to their first lunchtime. There's a total disconnect in our society about what people eat and where it came from. Hence the monthly "vertical farming" article about growing kale.
cstejerean 6y ago
I grew up having to grow pretty much everything we ate (by necessity as you couldn’t buy anything in stores). And whatever we didn’t grow ourselves we helped relatives or neighbors with and shared in harvest. I personally don’t understand the appeal of going back to that. I’m so glad I can just buy whatever I want at the grocery store these days and don’t need to spend all my free time on harvesting calories.
- three_seagrass 6y ago
  Reminds me of my reaction to that one Robert Heinlein quote about how "Specialization is for insects." Sounds romantic but also exhausting, unnecessarily so.
  - vkou 6y ago
    Robert Heinlein's life and career was made possible by those incredibly focused 'insects'. It's a nice platitude, but in its strong form, it seems quite myopic, and more than a tad out-of-touch.
- ketamine__ 6y ago
  Where was this?
  - oblio 6y ago
    It could be many places but one such place was Eastern Europe about 30 years ago.
bserge 6y ago
It will never cover your whole diet, but it is a good way of growing some of it yourself. And that's not as time intensive as the other commenter says. If you use soil, have the lights on a timer and use auto-irrigation, it's pretty much hands free. A few weekends to set up, then months of marveling at how plant life works heh.
pvaldes 6y ago
That depends on your diet and place.
abdullahkhalids 6y ago
I think it's really hard to grow most of your food with little effort, but you can go start with FarmBot See here for yield estimates https://farm.bot/pages/yield https://farm.bot/pages/yield With 18m^2 you can only get 175 calories/day which should be less than 10% of your diet.

vkou 6y ago

Step one is to quit your day job. Step two is to put in ~12 hours a day, 7 days a week of work into homesteading. Step three is to dip on your savings to buy farming equipment, consumable inputs, and groceries for the remaining half of your food that you won't be able to grow yourself. If you'd like to try before you buy, my parents' homestead up in Canada could always use another pair of hands. Money's a bit tight, but they can pay you with food and a couch to sleep on. You'll have to share the room with ~15-30 baby chicks, though. You'll quickly get used to the smell. I understand that this won't give you a vertical garden, but unlike a vertical garden, it will go most of the way to meeting your daily caloric and nutritional needs.

redis_mlc 6y ago
> Money's a bit tight, but they can pay you with food and a couch to sleep on. Even if he wanted to work for free, unless he's in Olympic-athlete shape and mentally tough, it's still a raw deal for the farm if they can get migrant workers instead. Most Americans who've been here more than one generation don't make it to their first lunchtime. There's a total disconnect in our society about what people eat and where it came from. Hence the monthly "vertical farming" article about growing kale.

cstejerean 6y ago

I grew up having to grow pretty much everything we ate (by necessity as you couldn’t buy anything in stores). And whatever we didn’t grow ourselves we helped relatives or neighbors with and shared in harvest. I personally don’t understand the appeal of going back to that. I’m so glad I can just buy whatever I want at the grocery store these days and don’t need to spend all my free time on harvesting calories.

three_seagrass 6y ago
Reminds me of my reaction to that one Robert Heinlein quote about how "Specialization is for insects." Sounds romantic but also exhausting, unnecessarily so.
- vkou 6y ago
  Robert Heinlein's life and career was made possible by those incredibly focused 'insects'. It's a nice platitude, but in its strong form, it seems quite myopic, and more than a tad out-of-touch.
ketamine__ 6y ago
Where was this?
- oblio 6y ago
  It could be many places but one such place was Eastern Europe about 30 years ago.

bserge 6y ago

It will never cover your whole diet, but it is a good way of growing some of it yourself. And that's not as time intensive as the other commenter says. If you use soil, have the lights on a timer and use auto-irrigation, it's pretty much hands free. A few weekends to set up, then months of marveling at how plant life works heh.

pvaldes 6y ago

That depends on your diet and place.

abdullahkhalids 6y ago

I think it's really hard to grow most of your food with little effort, but you can go start with FarmBot See here for yield estimates https://farm.bot/pages/yield https://farm.bot/pages/yield With 18m^2 you can only get 175 calories/day which should be less than 10% of your diet.