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My wife and I spent a few years with a few acres of land in Ireland and went hard on gardening, at one point providing all of our veg ourselves. But now that we
by CalRobert 2y ago
My wife and I spent a few years with a few acres of land in Ireland and went hard on gardening, at one point providing all of our veg ourselves. But now that we've left we don't miss it. It was fun while it was novel, though, and our kids learned a lot about where food comes from, which is nice.
It also tends to involve a huge amount of plastic, weirdly, and pests are a big issue.
- FredPret 2y agoI think the vast majority of plastic use happens before the consumer sees the product. I remember seeing my first pallet wrapper. It’s very cool but there’s a lot of plastic there. (Check out this vid starting at 43s: https://youtube.com/watch?v=TzqSEKCj0Po https://youtube.com/watch?v=TzqSEKCj0Po) Out of curiosity, how did a large garden involve lots of plastic?
- CalRobert 2y agoI wasn't even thinking of consumer-facing or transport plastics, I just meant what's used during growing. To start, you put black plastic on the ground to block light and kill off grass, weeds, etc.. Then there's plastic plant "fabric" on the plants at night to keep them warm, then plastic netting over plants to stop birds from eating the berries, and of course the polytunnel (called a hoop houses in some places) itself is made of thick plastic, and it will break down over time due to UV. All of this plastic degrades and turns in to microplastics in the environment. It's tiny by comparison but I always found it annoying that a strimmer is designed to just throw entire spools of plastic in to your garden one tiny piece at a time. The image here gives a decent visual https://vertical-farming.net/blog/2018/04/02/reimagining-almerias-agriculture/ https://vertical-farming.net/blog/2018/04/02/reimagining-alm...