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“It comes out of the fuckin’ ground. I couldn’t believe it!”
You know what comes out of their bums?!
Mitchell and Webb have a relevant sketch for almost every situation.
You cannot lose!
Upvoted and rewatched. Every time.
Gardening is cool and absolutely can decrease your spending, but I want to take a moment to talk about how the efficiency of a home garden will never match industrial farming and that the cost effectiveness of fertilizers required to grow all of your own food would negate the savings unless you’ve got your own ammonia mine and recycle all of your poop.
Efficiency in produce per monetary cost. But for efficiency of human health per natural resources, I think gardening might be a winner.
It was already well established that only the wealthy can afford a consistently healthy lifestyle, but thanks for chiming in.
Okay I’ve re-read back to your first comment and I think I see what you mean, now.
You mean, that you see gardening as something available only to the wealthy, so discussion of gardening helping with health is of no relevance/help to the question of how to improve the situation for the less wealthy, right?
I see your point. When I chimed in with gardening’s ‘efficiency’, I wasn’t trying to think of it as a solution for all people. That said, I do think some of the less industrial methods of farming are worth more effort. Maybe more people having gardens, rooftop aquaponics allotments. Small/local farming collectives. These things can help the balance be more in favour of getting the most health and human benefit, rather than the most money for shareholders and owners.
Sounds pretty defeatist to me.
Defeatist is accepting a system that harms the poor. Separating yourself from the system is unrealistic for the vast majority and doesn’t fix it.
That seems to be what you’re doing. “Only the wealthy can live healthy” and giving up on discussion to change that.
I see solutions to make Industrial Agriculture work to help all people: land redistribution, regulation, subsidization of what is actually needed. I see no way to make gardens at home work for every person, it’s a complete nonstarter.
You’re the defeatist, here. You’re fleeing from the problems.
*proposes way to help*
“Noo! You’re fleeing from the problems”
Good. You go ahead and work on you proposals to improve industrial agriculture. I might not think that’s a complete solution, but it’s not defeatist. Saying, “only the wealthy can eat healthy” and leaving it at that, sounded defeatist.
But I hope you can agree my support of more people doing home gardening - also not a complete solution - is a suggestion of how to improve things, not defeatist. You might disagree with its utility. You certainly disagree with it being a solution for everybody. But need you attack it as defeatist and running from problems?
I think you’re abstracting too much to try and make your point. What on earth does “efficiency of human health per natural resources” mean in comparison to “efficiency in produce per monetary cost”. I think youre just lost in a little too much sauce when trying to justify your view.
Compost is a home project (and available in some cities as part of the waste management system) and nutritious for plants; but most of the things I grow as food I don’t fertilize much or any. The fruit trees once a year or so, the garden soil sometimes in between planting or when growing watermelon or squash, bigger things do need some extra fertilizer (and tomatoes like some) but most seem to do fine with good soil and crop rotation/companion planting. Farmers have to use more because they’ve depleted the soil with monoculture. I still don’t think it’s cost effective when time is factored in, but it’s better fresher food and not as fussy as farming.
Genius, you just keep putting back less than you take and it lasts forever~! How come nobody thought of that? Snark put aside for a moment, I think composting on a large scale should be done, even in urban environments, but it won’t impact the statement I made even a single bit.
Dunno what to tell you - different plants put different things into and out of the soil, we cut the grass in the yard, and the bushes and things, all sorts of stuff can go into the pile that becomes nutrients and of course plants eat sunshine, not just soil nutrients. It’s been working a few years and the soil keeps improving.
Farming is a whole different thing and more reliant on fertilizer.
So the last part I’m way ahead, it’s all stored in several tanks in my backyard.
I love talking about this stuff so I was wondering if you plan to treat the urine with sodium to make urea as a nitrate fertilizers and if so what sodium source are you using?
Urine? Ugh dude, gross!! I’m only storing the poop of course
But theres SO MUCH nitrogen in Urine.
Industrial farming, as commonly practiced, is unsustainable. We basically just turn fossil fuels into food, and degrade our environment (including our food production capacity) while doing it.
Vegetable gardening can definitely save you money, including negations. Most people, including myself, just do it as a hobby though.
I started vegetable gardening last year, and all my inputs, so far, have been free (with the exception of seeds, seed starting soil, and various inexpensive tools). I’ve used chicken manure from Craigslist (had to shovel it myself), home made compost (grass/weed clippings, arborist wood chips, kitchen scraps), and sometimes urine for extra nitrogen (lol). I’ve noticed that with adding compost on top of my soil, I don’t really need much, if any, fertilizer (manure or urine).
Nitrogen-fixing plants can also be used to bring more nitrogen into your little garden ecosystem.
I haven’t used any pesticides or herbicides. I just hand pull any weeds when I see them and mulch with either wood chips or paper with compost on top. I hand-pick caterpillars when I see them (or hunt for them when I see a lot of damage), and just throw them into my lawn (they don’t seem to be able to make it back).
I’m still learning and experimenting, and have had certain species decimated by pests (brassicas), but I think I can experiment with timing, varieties, and hope natural predators will move in (I started planting plants in my perrenial beds that are supposed to attract beneficial insects, and put a birdhouse near my garden). If I find I can’t grow certain crops or varieties well in my environment, I just won’t. I save the seeds from my healthiest plants, so hopefully, this will eventually select for varieties that do well in my particular conditions.
No matter how you slice it, surviving completely off of home gardening would not be any more sustainable than industrial agriculture. Just more costly.
You can just take the bottom bulb from green onions, and just stick it into some dirt. Even when they’re old and the green parts are slimy. I never bother watering, and they do just fine.
You can even stick them in a glass of water to get them to freshen up a little, but without dirt for nutrients, they will thin out and die eventually.
Do this with a regular onion, especially if you’ve already got one in the pantry trying to sprout. As it grows you’ll get onion greens that work just like scallions in any recipe. Let it go to seed, now you have infinite onions, but depending on your local climate and luck, leave your original onion bulb to winter, and shoot again, and it has probably split into new bulbs, so you’ll probably get 2 new onions from the plant, plus onion greens, plus seeds. Eat one bulb, and leave the other bulb to grow more onion greens.
I’ve never bothered using the seeds, I just keep a bulb or two in the pot. Been 5 years. I still buy onions if I want something like onion jam or French onion soup, where I need like 1kg of onions. But Ive never had to buy scallions, and I’ve got onion flavour all year long through onion greens (you can dehydrate them, and freeze them really easily too, to store them when you have more than you can use)
I also highly recommend throwing peas into a large tray of soil. Litteraly just grab a bunch of aluminium foil disposable oven pans if you need to, stab some holes in them with a knife, an inch or two of soil, some dried whole peas or fresh garden peas, a sprinkle of more soil or just a wet sheet of kitchen roll/paper towel on top.
You probably won’t get peas, but you’ll have tons of pea tendrils for salads. On my balcony it’s the only “salad green” I’ve had any luck growing. I have a pretty black thumb. I can’t even manage to sprout chia seeds without them moulding, and I’ve never been able to grow mint despite broad casting mint seeds directly into my garden, urging the gardening gods to spite me with weedy mint but no dice.
When I buy peas, 4/5ths go in the fridge to eat, the other 5th gets planted, and I’ll get ~10 dishes from the tendrils vs 1 dish from the peas. Nutritionally the peas have more protein, but lentils are cheap, salad is expensive, so this works for my budget.
Tomatoes works too, paprika take the seeds out dry them a week plant them (inside first), etc.
Stop playing God!
Some things are just super easy to grow, others take so much effort its too much for the average person. But hell yeah, grow ur own food if u are lucky enough to own a garden.
Lettuce and tomatoes are surprisingly good value. I’d put them top tier.
Not sure what else is really good. Beans are easy but you never get enough.
Is garlic easy? Uk climate
Wild garlic might be a better option if you’re able to forage for it.
It’s relatively easy, because most pests won’t eat it and they are pretty frost resistant. There are winter and summer varieties, so don’t mix them up.
Yeah pretty easy, have a go. Maybe a bit too mild to be ideal but if we’re talking home production that doesn’t matter much. There’s a big farm on the Isle of Wight so we can’t be too far off.
I live near a garlic town and it gets fuckin hot there
Gilroy?
Oh i have no idea, i have never grown garlic so far.
Often you can get hardier breeds and i would expect it to be possible in the UK as longs as its not freezing.
This looks like a decent guide. Basically lots of sun, not too much water, lil bit of fertilizer and you are sure to get something.
Thank you
Yeah. When I lived in NW Florida (ugh), jalapenos grew like weeds in a small pot. Always had way too many.
Also a fun fact: in early spring you can often see green grass-like shoots growing before the grass starts and are quite tall. Those are wild alliums, the same family as garlic, onions and scallions.
We call it onion grass. I’m always yelling at my dog for eating them.
Are they bad for dogs? Or are you mad cause you wanted them?
I know cultivated onion and garlic are definitely poisonous to dogs. (and cats) I’m not sure though if wild allium contains the same chemical, and in the same amount, but it would be likely, which could easily lead to the hemolytic anemia.
Technically it’s poisonous to dogs, yeah. It’s a mild poison, but like chocolate (and grapes and raisins), they shouldn’t have it.
Leeks are part of the Allium family (which also includes onion, chives, and garlic) and are poisonous to dogs and cats. Garlic is considered to be about 5-times as potent as onion and leeks. Certain breeds and species are more sensitive, including cats and Japanese breeds of dogs (e.g., Akita, Shiba Inu).
Grapes and raisins are a different class. Alliums and chocolate are bad, sure, but if your dog has a bad reaction to grapes and really raisins, it can be 2-3 raisins cause kidney failure. They’re not quite sure about the mechanism, only that it doesn’t take much and isn’t an always thing.
Oh yes, they’re not a “mild” on the poison scale compared to like, grass onion and such.
Very true.
I struggle so hard with peppers. Jalapeños growing like weeds sounds like a dream.
I live in Norway and one year I planted 10 chili plants. I treated those plants like royalty and in the end I got like maybe 2 chilis per plant lol
Yeah, that echoes my experience here in Sweden. I guess the reason we use so much rotted fish in our cuisine is because we had no other way to introduce stronger flavours. 😭
I will note that when I moved to MD the plant did well but grew like 1 pepper all year. Gave up after that. Heartburn also made it less viable to eat so many. :p
I’m not sure what MD is, my brain just thinks “markdown” or medicine doctor. I hope your heartburn is doing better now!
Perhaps the US state of Maryland?
Maryland! US state on the eastern seaboard near the capital, Washington, D.C.
I have to ask. When I hear Maryland I think of a biscuit brand. Is Maryland known for chocolate chip biscuits or is the biscuit brand completely unrelated?
I’ve never heard of that before but I did find this when I looked:
https://www.burtonsbiscuits.com/our-brands/maryland-cookies/
It might benefit you to know that pepper plants can be kept alive nearly indefinitely if you give them good enough conditions. So if you keep them in a pot, you can trim them and move them inside over cold months (bare stems is fine as long as they don’t dry out), and then in spring they are already super well established and big and start putting out peppers really early.
I never do well with new pepper plants, but second season they produce like crazy.
Thanks you for the tips, I actually didn’t know they were perennial. That said, I think they just aren’t too fond of the climate here. I’d need a greenhouse (and space outdoors) or a heating mat and a decent sun light. I tried with chilies the other year, and even got a few fruits, but they were small and never ripened. The plant really struggled. To be fair, the plant was an experiment from the get-go. I germinated it from seeds I got in a cheapo chili flake jar from Lidl so I didn’t have huge expectations to begin with.
The growing season is so short here, you need to start them inside 2 months before planting them outside if you want them ready before the first frost in sept gets them.
Right now I only have an inside. My balcony gets morning sun, but not for very long. :(
Could always get a little tent and a grow light to grow them indoors. Peppers need decent light
Florida gardener too.
Jalapenos do great, okra grows in the summer! The summer! Mustard greens will too, and the Stokes. Purple sweet potatoes. In the cooler seasons, collards, lettuces, fennel, I’ve had surprising success with broccoli and cauliflower. Tomatoes I can grow whenever but birds eat them. Radishes fail me every time. No carrots or radishes have worked, ever… I just learned asparagus is perennial here, going to try that too.
My wife and I just moved from a townhouse to an actual house with a backyard so we can garden again. We’re around the Sarasota Area and the yard is really soft and sandy. Pretty sure something’s digging under there which is why it’s so soft… But they were there first so what’re ya gonna do. Any suggestions for planting this summer? Definitely gonna try Okra
Congratulations, I didn’t know anyone could afford a house in Sarasota right now, wow!
Yes to okra, it loves our summer, unless you have the nematodes that love it more than we do. Jalafuego hybrid jalapenos are robust plants and spicy peppers that can survive summer. Hibiscus likes our summer, and you are far enough south to grow mangoes.
For the garden garden you might do better with raised bed and some better soil over the sandy soil, but mangoes and citrus like it. “Well drained” as they say.
Oh God no we’re still renting. We bounced around the idea of buying something but prices are insane, and we’re not sure we want to settle in Florida. The home insurance cost and the increasing risk of big storms would make me too anxious.
Thanks for the advice! We were definitely thinking raised beds, but wanted to try our luck with a few in-ground things.
Sheep… They’re woolly… It’s wool!
Fucking eggs come out of their arses!
Fuckin’ 'ell!
New life hack: this is what some of the very first human civilizations did to spend their time
Turn your life around with this ancient trick!
You don’t need the future, turn back time to the good ol’ days.
Pretty sure zoomers just troll boomers who genuinely think the new generation is stupid
As a millennial…zoomer humor is soooo much better than boomer humor.
You don’t like boomer humor knee slapper jokes like
“My wife is a bitch, please take her”
And
“Oh look it’s a homosexual”
?
Picture of a Minion with the caption: “Tuesday? I thought you said WINE-day.”
I don’t think I’ve ever seen “oh look it’s a homosexual” as a boomer humor joke, but definitely a lot of using LGBT as a sideshow.
Hang with my dad for a bit. When he’s lucid, he’ll pop Forrest Gump voices, poke fun at gender neutral pronouns and talk loudly in the open about my gay neighbors (who are amazing). All this often leads to a fight and learning that it’s not ok to verbally abuse boomers, but it’s ok for them to verbally abuse everyone else. This privilege comes with age… so I’m told.
Trust me, you’re not missing out
As another millennial… you’re not wrong, but you basically put the bar on the floor there. The funniest thing about most boomer humor is that they actually they’re clever.
Also true
frantically types on keyboard with the cord stuffed into the dirt
Just got root access.
Nice one. Time to traverse the tree.
Spanning Tree?
I hear networking one of those is difficult.
The trick with garlic is to just bury it everywhere in your garden where there’s space, no need for a vegetable garden. The leaves take minimal space and digging them back up only requires making a small hole, plus they apparently keep some pests away.
It’s happy in a pot on the windowsill, doesn’t much care about soil quality, can be harvested just for the greens.
I plant it everywhere though.
tiktok feed of threads user.
Babe, let’s play Stardew Valley IRL like omg
Yeah, I hear the graphics are amazing!
I keep having this glitch where I’m stuck in the opening scene with the jojo cubicle. I’m supposed to get a letter telling me I’ve inherited a farm but that hasn’t happened yet, anyone else got this bug?
You can skip it if you will go to granny’s dacha anyway.
Pretty sure it’s this youtuber called Pro Home Cook. He and his brother used to do home recipes with limited pantry size and tools. But he got too big and started doing fermentation, sprouting, brewing and gardening.
Picking up gardening at any age is a good thing not only as a way to stay active and keep your pantry better stocked but you also get a good sense of accomplishment
Neighbor tried to plant potatoes. She got about six pounds worth of top and no tuber.
We spent weeks debugging and still don’t know what went wrong.
Potatoes you have to keep mounding up with dirt to force the plant to grow more roots (tubers) instead of the leafy tops.
TIL. Thanks.
Potato tubers are not actually roots. They are modified stems. So the surest way to force more potatoes is to “hill” them. In the commercial fields this is done with a huge tractor raking soil from in between planting rows and piling it up on the plants. You essentially bury the plants stem as it grows taller. Then the buds on the stem will push out stolons (horizontal underground stems.) these will terminate in tubers, aka: potatoes!
Source: did potato disease research for my PhD.
Additional edit: loose/sandy soil is critical. Too dense of soil and your tubers can’t expand well.
Alert: agronomist infiltrated the chat
Hacker voice: “I’m in 😎”
Does this apply to any other root vegetables? Beets?
Warning: I am not a beet expert. But I believe beets are actual roots. Just like carrots. And I think you only get one beer per plant? Burying the stem would just make it harder for new leaves to come up.
Potatoes are pretty unique in this sense. Even sweet potatoes are not the same.
Don’t plant them too close to each other. It doesn’t work.
Top? No tuber?
All stems and leaves and flowers and shit. But no potatoes growing in the roots of the plants.
Thanks. Is that unusual? I always assumed potatoes were an easy grow.
That is unusual, because yeah, potatoes are easy to grow
six pounds worth of top
Where is this neighbor located? Asking for a friend 👀
Nice 🥒
