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Anecdotally, I spent the last two years trying to grow various stuff in planters on my balcony. I invested quite a bit of time and effort into it, including goo

Anecdotally, I spent the last two years trying to grow various stuff in planters on my balcony. I invested quite a bit of time and effort into it, including good soil, fertilizers, monitoring..etc. I kinda figured that while I might not get amazing yields, I have done as much as I could to at least get decent yields. Reality had a lot to say to the contrary. Between the various pests, weather and nutrient problems, I ended up with relatively unproductive gardens both years (Except the peppers, for some reason those ended up being both very productive and very spicy.) All of this is to say that your comments on farming are pretty spot on. Growing stuff is hard. Growing stuff so that you make some profit to sustain yourself is even harder.

Gordonjcp 4y ago
> (Except the peppers, for some reason those ended up being both very productive and very spicy.) Sounds like you need to look at your soil. What else did you try to grow? Incidentally, this is one of the reasons why "just stop growing fodder crops for livestock and grow things humans can eat!" doesn't exactly work.
- genocidicbunny 4y ago
  Tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbages, various herbs, peas, green beans..etc. It's not that these were unproductive, I got a good amount of vegetables and herbs from my garden, but it would have been much cheaper to hit up the farmers market to get the same amount of stuff. My anecdote was more speaking to the capriciousness of farming/gardening. Time and effort make no guarantee of the result.
  - nicoburns 4y ago
    > it would have been much cheaper to hit up the farmers market to get the same amount of stuff It seems to me generally true in the modern world that it's cheaper to buy mass-produced goods than to make things yourselves. There are exceptions, but they're increasingly rare.
    - genocidicbunny 4y ago
      I mentioned the farmers market purposefully. The ones I visit tend to not be mass-produced stuff, but even with the commensurate price increase that carries, it's still cheaper than anything I've grown myself.
      - nicoburns 4y ago
        I'd imagine even a farmer's market is likely to have crops grown on a scale larger than you are growing them, even if that scale is still much smaller than mainstream commercial farms.
  - 0xbadcafebee 4y ago
    > Time and effort make no guarantee of the result. True enough! Growing things successfully is all about education. Actually growing what you grew might have been next to free with the right know-how (composting and natural alterations for good soil, harvesting seeds from organic foods, natural pest control, etc). But of course you don't know that until you get years worth of education!
  - Gordonjcp 4y ago
    Bet they tasted pretty good though!
SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
> including good soil, fertilizers, monitoring.. etc. Similarly, I could afford some pots, hand-picked hot pepper seedlings and "Chilli Focus Premium Fertiliser", and to inspect them daily. And on a good year I had a great crop, some is still in the freezer. On a bad year, the weather waterlogs them and pests finish them off. But none of this scales to 8K plants. None of this was intended to show a net profit.
kybernetyk 4y ago
>very spicy means the plants had a lot of stress :)
nkozyra 4y ago
Peppers are some of the most resilient plants on earth as long as the temperature is right. They can survive and produce with too much/too little water, don't have _tons_ of pests (although hornworms will strip the leaves if you don't remove them fast enough) and are tolerant to a lot of soil conditions.

Gordonjcp 4y ago

> (Except the peppers, for some reason those ended up being both very productive and very spicy.) Sounds like you need to look at your soil. What else did you try to grow? Incidentally, this is one of the reasons why "just stop growing fodder crops for livestock and grow things humans can eat!" doesn't exactly work.

genocidicbunny 4y ago
Tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbages, various herbs, peas, green beans..etc. It's not that these were unproductive, I got a good amount of vegetables and herbs from my garden, but it would have been much cheaper to hit up the farmers market to get the same amount of stuff. My anecdote was more speaking to the capriciousness of farming/gardening. Time and effort make no guarantee of the result.
- nicoburns 4y ago
  > it would have been much cheaper to hit up the farmers market to get the same amount of stuff It seems to me generally true in the modern world that it's cheaper to buy mass-produced goods than to make things yourselves. There are exceptions, but they're increasingly rare.
  - genocidicbunny 4y ago
    I mentioned the farmers market purposefully. The ones I visit tend to not be mass-produced stuff, but even with the commensurate price increase that carries, it's still cheaper than anything I've grown myself.
    - nicoburns 4y ago
      I'd imagine even a farmer's market is likely to have crops grown on a scale larger than you are growing them, even if that scale is still much smaller than mainstream commercial farms.
- 0xbadcafebee 4y ago
  > Time and effort make no guarantee of the result. True enough! Growing things successfully is all about education. Actually growing what you grew might have been next to free with the right know-how (composting and natural alterations for good soil, harvesting seeds from organic foods, natural pest control, etc). But of course you don't know that until you get years worth of education!
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  Bet they tasted pretty good though!

SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago

> including good soil, fertilizers, monitoring.. etc. Similarly, I could afford some pots, hand-picked hot pepper seedlings and "Chilli Focus Premium Fertiliser", and to inspect them daily. And on a good year I had a great crop, some is still in the freezer. On a bad year, the weather waterlogs them and pests finish them off. But none of this scales to 8K plants. None of this was intended to show a net profit.

kybernetyk 4y ago

>very spicy means the plants had a lot of stress :)

nkozyra 4y ago

Peppers are some of the most resilient plants on earth as long as the temperature is right. They can survive and produce with too much/too little water, don't have _tons_ of pests (although hornworms will strip the leaves if you don't remove them fast enough) and are tolerant to a lot of soil conditions.