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I've been looking into plants recently and they are mind-blowing. I don't even know where to start. In re: TFA, most annuals that we use for crops have perenn
by carapace 6y ago
I've been looking into plants recently and they are mind-blowing.
I don't even know where to start.
In re: TFA, most annuals that we use for crops have perennial versions. I just planted a "thicket bean" (Phaseolus polystachios) which should grow for years! There are perennial kales that grow into small tree-like "canes". There's a thing called a "strawberry tree" that is exactly what it sounds like: a tree that grows strawberry-like fruit. It goes on and on.
One take-away is that agriculture as it has been practiced is about the dumbest way to grow food. :( Check out Gabe Brown's videos on regenerative agriculture to see how we can grow food and increase fertility and volume of soil by incorporating more species and doing less work. See also the "food forest" concept: imagine a park or botanical garden where every species is edible. It takes a while to set up but then it is self-sustaining with low labor, you mostly just harvest.
Another take-away is that we mostly already have all the technology we need to make a really fun and enjoyable civilization. We have all these species that can develop food, medicine, clothing, fiber, wood, etc. such that the vast majority of our needs can be fulfilled in a garden.
- nyokodo 6y ago> agriculture as it has been practiced is about the dumbest way to grow food > imagine a park or botanical garden where every species is edible. Make it happen! If the way we’ve been doing things is dumb then there is a massive market opportunity. Save the world, become the first trillionaire.
- carapace 6y agoGabe Brown makes money. His neighbor ignores him. What can you do? It does seem like folks are catching on though. Business can be slow to adapt, especially in agriculture, but farmers are pragmatic. Brown's talks seem well-attended.
- Sebguer 6y agoThe idea that the validity of an idea is measured by how much money you can make by implementing it is /why/ our current system is flawed.
- lolsal 6y agoMoney represents value. It's the lowest common denominator when talking about whether or not an idea is worth doing. It's hard to quantify altruism. e.g. An idea to plant a garden with entirely toxic plants is just as valid, but not as valuable.
- kjeetgill 6y agoI think ideas like "money represent value" are tru-ish enough approximations from a distance but comments like this show just how easy it is to slip into seeing them as definitions or absolute truth. Useful models are still models after all.
- lolsal 6y agoI'm not sure why you think I was defining 'money is value','value is money' or some other absolute truth. I did not say such a thing. Money does represent value of some kind, right? Whether that's time, labor, or [fill-in-the-blank]. It's a tool to represent generic value. I'm interested to hear what you think a better unit of measurement might be for determining whether or not an idea is 'valid' or worth doing. Can you elaborate?
- Fellshard 6y agoI suspect there's trade-offs that aren't being thoroughly considered in this equation. That's the case in every full-on 'everything we're doing is wrong, and there's a perfect solution' claim.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- carapace 6y agoNope, in this case it's just science. Specifically ecology. It turns out that when we understand what the plants and animals are doing in detail (through science) we can arrange them in time and space in ways that are vastly more efficient than what we've been doing these last ~12k years. Think about it, if it wasn't so that would mean that our ancestors discovered optimal farming in antiquity, eh? Just think: we used to burn chaff rather than composting it. It turns out that that is not a good idea. It's that sort of thing that I'm thinking of when I call ag "the dumbest way" to grow food.
- Aardwolf 6y ago> Think about it, if it wasn't so that would mean that our ancestors discovered optimal farming in antiquity, eh? Farming has undergone several fundamental changes throughout history after that though, notably in medieval times and then everything industrialization brought
- tremon 6y agoFarming has undergone several fundamental changes Can you name some that can't be reduced to "but on a [insert new machine]"? The only one I can think of is artificial fertilizer, which isn't a sustainable practice in the long run either.
- ajuc 6y agoBosh-Haber process increased food supply several times in less than a decade. There was no starvation in a developed country ever since it got adopted on mass scale. It happened less than 100 years ago. Compared to that every other revolution in farming was insignificant.
- admash 6y agoJust an aside - I have the perennial walking-stick kale growing at my place. I climb on my roof to to harvest it. It grows enormous leaves too.
- carapace 6y agoAch, I'm a little jelly (jealous.) :) That's so cool! How old is it? How is the taste? Is the cane woody or is it more like bamboo or something else? Does it flower?
- theli0nheart 6y ago> There's a thing called a "strawberry tree" that is exactly what it sounds like: a tree that grows strawberry-like fruit. It goes on and on. Cool reference that I hadn't heard of before, so I just looked this up. The fruits of this tree look absolutely nothing like strawberries (more like lychees, IMHO), so I don't think this is a good example for what you're describing.
- freshair 6y agoThey look very similar (though probably larger) to mock strawberries (which are not really strawberries either.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potentilla_indica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potentilla_indica Incidentally: from a botanical perspective, strawberries are not berries. Nor do they even taste like straw!
- ncmncm 6y agoBotanically, practically nothing we call a berry is a berry except blue-. And practically every other fruit is a berry. The word is a wastebasket. Today I learned that papaya is closely related to cabbage.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> Botanically, practically nothing we call a berry is a berry except blue-. cran-, elder-, lingon-, among others. (Also, the fruit of the strawberry tree, unlike either strawberries or mock strawberries.)
- silviot 6y agoI'm not sure it's connected to the origin of the word, but when I saw straw laid down in strawberry fields like this [1] I thought the name comes from that custom. I believe (still, I could be wrong) that the straw is put there to prevent weeds from getting sunlight. [1] https://i0.wp.com/oaeblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/German-strawberry-field.jpg?w=1532&ssl=1 https://i0.wp.com/oaeblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Ger...
- ajuc 6y ago> how we can grow food and increase fertility and volume of soil by incorporating more species and doing less work It still loses in profit per investment to modern industrialized farming, so (almost) nobody cares. If you want people to care - tax soil degradation. Turns out with artificial fertilizers and modern technology neither work nor soil degradation is as important as quick adaptation to market forces and economies of scale.
- moralestapia 6y agoI know about regenerative agro and I find it amazing as well. I just want to point out that the way modern agriculture came to be is not dumb at all, the thing is that its focused on maximizing yield above other things. 7 billion people eat something (almost) everyday, I find it quite impressive that the infrastructure to support that, exists. I hope the world could be stopped (as it happened, more or less, with COVID) in order to fix some of these problems, but in the case of food, it's going to be hard to ask people to stop eating for a while.
- gus_massa 6y ago> [...] most annuals that we use for crops have perennial versions. [...] > One take-away is that agriculture as it has been practiced is about the dumbest way to grow food. [...] One very useful technique in modern agriculture is crop rotation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_rotation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_rotation You grow each year a different crops, because they have different fertilizer requirements (and some even fix Nitrogen) and also helps to reduce some plagues. It's also possible to plant different crops in succession, so you get multiple harvests in the same year. For these, a perennial version is bad.
- klyrs 6y agoThe fruit of a strawberry tree is nothing like a strawberry. The skin is made of small, fibrous scales which stick to the tongue and insinuate themselves into every crevice of one's mouth. The flesh is shot through with dozens of hard pips, its texture is mealy like cream of wheat, and the flavor is bland with a hint of sweetness. A strawberry has a very distinctive shape, but the strawberry tree's fruit is a droll spheroid. These enticing looking fruits must be useful for something, right? Well, be careful -- fermenting them produces a lot of wood alcohol, so it requires careful distillation to be safe. To top it off, the strawberry is not properly a berry, but if I'm reading things right, the fruit of a strawberry tree is. About the only thing they have in common is their red color, but thanks to internationalized agriculture, proper strawberries have almost entirely lost that characteristic in favor of a year-round supply. But if you like those, you should try the berries of haw and ash. They're similar in texture, lack of flavor, and seediness, but their mouthfeel is significantly improved by the lack of scales.
- _nalply 6y agoAh, you mean the Arbutus unedo. Yeah, the fruits are completely different. You can't compare the strawberry with these fruits. When not yet full ripe, the fruits are brightly yellow-orange, not a reddish-white of strawberries. However the honey from them is absolutely special and delicious. The honey is bitter. I fell in love with the honey from the strawberry trees in Corsica.
- burmer 6y agoYeah, I’ve seen some plants, when looking to buy, where they are described as annuals, or perennials if in the right climate.
- steve_adams_86 6y agoThere is a well-maintained “food forest” near my home which is a real pleasure to stroll through and pick berries from occasionally. There’s an incredible mulberry tree, thickets of autumn olives, plums, wild greens of all varieties, sea buckthorn, figs, medlar, and more. It takes volunteers real work to keep it tame enough for a city, but they’ve done it for as long as I’ve lived here and it’s a really beautiful spot.
- whythre 6y agoHow do they keep birds from eating the fruit? In my personal but limited experience, birds tend to eat certain kinds of fruit long before it ripens enough for human consumption.
- steve_adams_86 6y agoThe birds do eat some, but that's fine. The birds in this city don't appear to have any shortage of food. Some plums or berries will be ruined or taken, but mostly the garden manages itself just fine. Same as you'll find wild berries in huge numbers – many have already been eaten by wild animals, but there's still plenty left too. One perk of this style of gardening is that, for various reasons, pest moderation seems to happen automatically. No pesticides are required, the garden is watered by humans only a handful of times in summer, and no fertilizers besides city compost are used. Everything is lush and happy. Insects are everywhere, and perhaps birds are eating those instead of berries. It's hard to say exactly how each biome functions, but this one is very productive and animals aren't a problem for it.
- pvaldes 6y agoStrawberry tree has the color in a similar shape, don't expect the real flavor or texture of a real strawberry. Sometimes annuals are just handy to use the land in a more efficient way. You can obtain three crops in two years in the same land with annual species