Gotta love all the “just grow your own!” comments and the lack of awareness about how analogous it is to “just pull yourself up by your bootstraps!”
Or maybe not a lack of awareness, who knows what trolls, bots and influences lurk on lemmy, pushing conservative victim blame. Worked on reddit for plastic straws and personal carbon footprints.
Yeah, turns out growing crops is hard
Its not that its hard, but it takes land and time, which is a privilege. Growing food is actually incredibly easy. But not everyone can access land, and you still need 30-60 days for lettuce to grow to maturity. If I need lettuce today, how does putting seeds in the ground help for the next month.
Growing food is incredibly easy
By comrade in crisis, I grew up with a family and extended family putting blood sweat and tears into food gardens every summer my whole life. They managed to grow enough to supplement everyone’s diets most years. But they still needed groceries. And some years things went to shit when weather or pests or something else went wrong. And it was never, ever easy. So, I’m sorry. I call bullshit.
I grow food, provided you have land and time, its so fucking easy. You put compost down, add seeds, add mulch, water deeply when the ground dries out. I use a hose timer so I can turn it on and walk away. None of this is rocket science, people way over think their gardens, plants are resilient.
My first year, I planted zuchini and it grew like crazy. Unfortunately so did the beetles that ate it. Every morning I went out to water it, and they’d scatter. I didn’t want to use pesticide on my food, so I waged a war spraying the hose with one hand and crushing them with the other. I have a bad back, so that was fun. The next year I added cantaloupe, ready for the same song and dance. Between the bugs and the heat, I managed to harvest one single zuchini before they ate what hadn’t shriveled up under the sun. The year after that, I tried onions. They overtook the flower bed and the root system is weedlike. I think I put too many, too close together. This year I’ve been in too much pain and its been too hot, so I haven’t even tried. That was all at my parents place. My apartment doesn’t have much patio space, so it gets partial sun. I’ve tried to raise tomatoes, carrots, zuchini and anything that sprouts from my compost. Everything starts out ok but by a month the sun has shifted and doesn’t hit the space the same the rest of the summer.
I understand if I had better land, more time, more sun, and no bugs maybe it would be easy. But you gotta be kidding me.
I’ve had issues with bugs which has mostly been solved by interplanting everything. Every tomato, pepper, and basil plant is in different parts of the garden with marigolds and other companion plants around. Bugs like monocrops, they tend to have lower pressure when you mix things up. Bugs still get a few things, but they are a lot less focused than when I grew things in large monocrop beds. The bad back makes it hard though, planting can be hard on your back.
So happy for you that you have the things that make that easy. Good climate, no pests or deer or rabbits or crows, or robins or other birds, considerate neighbours, access to water for irrigation all year long, and apparently no issues with weeds eh? And lots of access to cheap, safe compost too huh? Oh and the tools (and storage!) to spread compost, aerate soil, weed (wait you dont get weeds!), and manage things like planter beds or poles or netting or trellises or tomatoes cages? And you grow enough that you meaningfully cut down on groceries huh? What a lucky duck.
Certainly some of the things you listed can present challenges, but I really think our society mythologises planting and farming and that was really my point, which I made poorly because I was being too flippant.
We act like producing food is an 80 hour a week job for only the smartest green thumbs when it doesn’t even take a fraction of that time and takes an accessible amount of skill.
Provided you’re privileged enough to have access to 1/4 - 1/2 acre of sunny land, you could grow a decent portion of your food for under 10 hrs a week. I know people who do.
Certainly expanding to that size takes some time prepping new beds, but maintaining existing beds and growing food in them is really not that much work. I maintain about 1500 sq/ft of food garden right now and outside of 5-15 hours of early spring prep I spend 1-2 hours a week in the garden through most of the actual growing season, and that’s probably an over estimation. Each season I expand a manageable amount, and that’s really the most time consuming because I am hand terracing a hill, 1 row each year. Certainly there is work, but acting like its super hard is just silly. I spend most of my time doing anything but gardening.
Honestly, maybe you’re serious. And maybe you’re a nice person and you just don’t get how what you’re saying comes off. But you just put “hand terracing a hill” in the same paragraph where you then said that acting like gardening is hard is silly.
Maybe for the person who has the knowledge, skills, abilities, and resources to successfully hand terrace a hill it isn’t that hard? I’m sure LeBron James doesnt find layups that hard either.
Regardless of how you meant it, the comment comes off with strong Lucille Bluth vibes.
Sad, I could have not known they were MAGA and kept buying their salads for years. Ah well. Sayonara, taylor salad!
Any recommendations for decent-company salads?
Go to your local farmers market and buy lettuce from and support local farmers
Sorry in advance for the rant, but it’s a bit of a pet peeve of mine when someone asks a question and gets an answer for a completely different question. They specifically asked for salads made by decent companies and you’ve told them to go and buy the ingredients at a market. They basically asked what wattage of lightbulb would be best for their lamp and you’ve recommended a great candlemaker.
I get that in a perfect world we’d all only eat locally-grown produce from small farms and suppliers or grow our own food, but we don’t all have that luxury. Because of economic and social pressures, we often have to make choices we wouldn’t like to make.
Maybe this person doesn’t have the time and energy to travel to a market just to buy lettuce or to make their own salad; maybe that’s cost-prohibitive for them; maybe they live in a food desert; maybe the local grocer is 5 minutes away while their nearest market is an hour’s drive; or maybe they’re looking for a type of lettuce that isn’t grown locally so that they can make dishes that are culturally appropriate for them.
Yeah, this unfortunately. I also recommend buying lettuce from Costco
We have a Gotham Greens grow house in my city, and I know they have operations in several areas. They only sell in markets they grow in, so the produce never has to travel far. I’m sure there are similar operations scattered across the country. But if you can, farmers markets are where it’s at.
Maybe start growing your own?
Food production is basically just a handful of monopolies at this point, your area is probably either supplied by Taylor or not
I appreciate the idea and agree that would be a good thing. But I need to express that the chances of that ever happening at this point are really quite low.
I can relate. I inherited 3 raised boxes this year, put them together, and they’re still waiting to be set out and filled. Maybe next year me will finish what this year me started.
I will say, setting up a small basic herb garden and lettuce is super easy, low maintenance, and forgiving as far as growing plants goes.
Not too late to start fall lettuce or even kale. You need to find out what variety grows well in your area though.
Maybe start growing your own
I did. It’s actually not that easy. They’re turning into broccoli. Have a look at this abysmal failure will ya?
You gotta pick the leaves regularly, that doesn’t look like the kind of lettuce you get a whole head of at once
If that’s what i think it is, you get a whole head, its still too early. They start out growing every which way and later a head forms in the middle.
The one in the bottom right looks like it’s saying “feed me!”
Yeah it’s a complete write off
I feel terrible. I have failed as a farmer
I didn’t mean to insult your skills as a farmer, it was a reference to Little Shop of Horrors where the plant acquires a taste for human blood.
It appears you have big, leafy plants. That’s a success, even if you don’t like how they look yet.
Yeah nah you’re good, i did miss the reference but now you raise it, yeah.
Cheers, yeah the tomatoes are booming since I repotted those. I’m in a bit of a war with boring insects in my pumpkins but a couple of those are coming through too.
But it’s back to the drawing board with the leaf veges. They might have to be done in a raised bed
I had lettuce the other day and I also happen to be having diarrhea. Does anyone know if this is a dangerous condition?
I’m getting my medical advice from lemmy because I live in the US and can’t afford healthcare…
Most people handle the infection easily. Its dangerous to the immunodeficient, infants and the elderly.
The main risk is from dehydration. So the first recommended treatment is over-the-counter anti-diarrheal medications and drinking lots of fluids.
If it lasts for more than a week or you suffer from symptoms of dehydration (clammy skin, dizziness, not peeing etc) you’ll need to seek urgent medical care. Someplace that can give you an IV.
Not a medical DR, I just play one occasionally for shits and giggles. So this could be correct or a bunch of bullshit.
Bold business plan to try to give your customers more diarrhea. I’d love to have listened in on that marketing meeting.
