4 ms·

I am curious. Which country do you live in?

silisili 3y ago
Southwestern USA. Which is kinda funny as my wife hates it and wants to move because gardening here is really hard-to-impossible, but she doesn't want to give up our great neighborhood, so we're at an impasse.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Gardening should be possible in the southwest, but you may have to utilize greenhouses or whatever the opposite of one is. Much of the "desert" will bloom if you pour enough water on it (and drip irrigation does wonders). But you can't do a "midwest" style garden.
  - silisili 3y ago
    Right, and we're used to that style of gardening (and tropical, we've lived all over). Here the main problems are that the soil is completely garbage, it never rains, and there's too much sun. She's had limited success planting things in large bags full of garden soil, watering every day, and building a system of shades from the afternoon sun - it's just a big hassle compared to gardening in a lot of the eastern side of the US.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      Yep. The first can be repaired, the second compensated for, but the third is the killer. You either have to vastly move the growing season (growing in winter seems strange) or you have to learn new tricks that don't "feel right" like growing things up against a building to get shade half the day. Composting can be a great way to improve the soil, but it takes years to really get going. But if you're going to be there for years ... And maybe you could even get "donations" from neighbors! I know one person who setup compost jars for her neighbors to get more compostables.
    - tw8345 3y ago
      Gardening isn't easy to get started. Most people end up living in houses that have poor soil (fill dirt) and dont realize how much you need to water to have success. Automatic irrigation with sprinklers and timers is critical otherwise things will die while you go on vacation. Your gardening season is probably offset from the rest of the country with a dead zone in the July/august when you get heat kill. My wife for example likes to water for 5-10 seconds and that basically does nothing, you have to water significantly more as you need to put down 1/2" a day or more during the peak. It would take forever to do that with just a garden house and the pots you have can probably barely hold the water required to last a day. Reference https://earlywarning.usgs.gov/ssebop/modis https://earlywarning.usgs.gov/ssebop/modis for you area. Also if you aren't buying compost by the truck load you probably aren't buying enough. For the first run you need like 6+ yards to fill up a couple beds, and the next year that will decompose to half and you will need to fill up again. Spend a bit more buy the good stuff (ask online whats good locally), the city waste compost is not great stuff has plastic and shit you will never get out plus it holds water poorly due to all the filler they add.
- Fervicus 3y ago
  Thanks, I love the idea of living in this kind of a neighborhood. I have been living in an apartment building for close to a decade now and I don't know a single person on my floor or in my building. I don't even know who my neighbor is.
bcrosby95 3y ago
I'm not the person you're replying to, but we did this in an LA suburb. Among other things that have resulted from it: One of our neighbors invites everyone over for 4th of July every year. We have a block party where we block off the street once or twice per year. Neighbors have been over for backyard parties, my wife goes to birthday lunches with the wives on the street, and there's a giant text thread where people ask for help/etc for things. During the first year of covid, we did a special neighborhood Halloween, where everyone on the block put out bags of candy for neighborhood kids to go house to house and pick up.
- mahathu 3y ago
  > where everyone on the block put out bags of candy for neighborhood kids to go house to house and pick up. Is this usual in the region, or perhaps did I misunderstand you? Don't the kids usually walk up to the doors and ring, and then you personally hand out candy to them?
  - bcrosby95 3y ago
    During covid lots of people didn't want to do a normal trick-or-treat. So we arranged something in our immediate neighborhood - about 20 houses - to create a bag of candy for each kid in those houses. We left them on the lawn and each family with kids took their turn going around to each house to get their bag of candy. So it was less "go to random people's houses" and more "let's get together and make sure halloween isn't cancelled".

Southwestern USA. Which is kinda funny as my wife hates it and wants to move because gardening here is really hard-to-impossible, but she doesn't want to give up our great neighborhood, so we're at an impasse.

bombcar 3y ago
Gardening should be possible in the southwest, but you may have to utilize greenhouses or whatever the opposite of one is. Much of the "desert" will bloom if you pour enough water on it (and drip irrigation does wonders). But you can't do a "midwest" style garden.
- silisili 3y ago
  Right, and we're used to that style of gardening (and tropical, we've lived all over). Here the main problems are that the soil is completely garbage, it never rains, and there's too much sun. She's had limited success planting things in large bags full of garden soil, watering every day, and building a system of shades from the afternoon sun - it's just a big hassle compared to gardening in a lot of the eastern side of the US.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Yep. The first can be repaired, the second compensated for, but the third is the killer. You either have to vastly move the growing season (growing in winter seems strange) or you have to learn new tricks that don't "feel right" like growing things up against a building to get shade half the day. Composting can be a great way to improve the soil, but it takes years to really get going. But if you're going to be there for years ... And maybe you could even get "donations" from neighbors! I know one person who setup compost jars for her neighbors to get more compostables.
  - tw8345 3y ago
    Gardening isn't easy to get started. Most people end up living in houses that have poor soil (fill dirt) and dont realize how much you need to water to have success. Automatic irrigation with sprinklers and timers is critical otherwise things will die while you go on vacation. Your gardening season is probably offset from the rest of the country with a dead zone in the July/august when you get heat kill. My wife for example likes to water for 5-10 seconds and that basically does nothing, you have to water significantly more as you need to put down 1/2" a day or more during the peak. It would take forever to do that with just a garden house and the pots you have can probably barely hold the water required to last a day. Reference https://earlywarning.usgs.gov/ssebop/modis https://earlywarning.usgs.gov/ssebop/modis for you area. Also if you aren't buying compost by the truck load you probably aren't buying enough. For the first run you need like 6+ yards to fill up a couple beds, and the next year that will decompose to half and you will need to fill up again. Spend a bit more buy the good stuff (ask online whats good locally), the city waste compost is not great stuff has plastic and shit you will never get out plus it holds water poorly due to all the filler they add.
Fervicus 3y ago
Thanks, I love the idea of living in this kind of a neighborhood. I have been living in an apartment building for close to a decade now and I don't know a single person on my floor or in my building. I don't even know who my neighbor is.

bcrosby95 3y ago

I'm not the person you're replying to, but we did this in an LA suburb. Among other things that have resulted from it: One of our neighbors invites everyone over for 4th of July every year. We have a block party where we block off the street once or twice per year. Neighbors have been over for backyard parties, my wife goes to birthday lunches with the wives on the street, and there's a giant text thread where people ask for help/etc for things. During the first year of covid, we did a special neighborhood Halloween, where everyone on the block put out bags of candy for neighborhood kids to go house to house and pick up.

mahathu 3y ago
> where everyone on the block put out bags of candy for neighborhood kids to go house to house and pick up. Is this usual in the region, or perhaps did I misunderstand you? Don't the kids usually walk up to the doors and ring, and then you personally hand out candy to them?
- bcrosby95 3y ago
  During covid lots of people didn't want to do a normal trick-or-treat. So we arranged something in our immediate neighborhood - about 20 houses - to create a bag of candy for each kid in those houses. We left them on the lawn and each family with kids took their turn going around to each house to get their bag of candy. So it was less "go to random people's houses" and more "let's get together and make sure halloween isn't cancelled".