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I ran commercially successful regenerative farms for many years. Here is the shocking truth Corporate Jesus ™ didn't want you to know:
You aren't "competing" on price or quantity. You are competing on quality. Quality in taste, quality in freshness which also means quality in nutrition^ and quality in sustainability.
So... it might cost you a bit more in money and/or time to grow food in your garden but you are getting so much more value out of it. That's the yield and that's the cost effectiveness.
That's massively more efficient than subsidizing huge-scale industrial agriculture so that some giant corporation can yield higher profits. In fact, come to think of it, shouldn't home gardens be subsidized?
^ E.g. 90% of vitamin C in spinach is lost after 72 hours from harvest
home gardening requires time and land.
It's largely a privilege for those who have both. not a solution for the economically depressed who have neither.
It’s largely a privilege for those who have both. not a solution for the economically depressed who have neither.
I'm pretty sure that's what Corporate Jesus would want people to believe. And to be honest, sometimes labeling something as "privileged" is just another way of reinforcing that thinking. It doesn't have to be that way.
- Gardening does not require much time relative to the value of the output. Many new gardeners will say "oh but it's so time consuming" because they are still learning and make lots of mistakes. If you have your systems up and running and your processes down, it's a fraction of the actual value produced and is extremely efficient. Don't get me started or I will go on about this in extreme nerdy detail from personal experience.
- Collective action can massively increase both the availability of suitable land and the output relative to any one individual's effort. An obvious example of this is community gardens such as the Gill Tract in Albany, CA. If Occupy the Farm had been better supported we the people could have had the whole thing, but there still is a large garden available for use by neighboring houses. And there are community gardens and vacant land waiting to be community gardens everywhere. It just takes folks to say they can do it to make it happen.
A key component in this is a general misunderstanding of the value of your labor. When you garden you retain 100% of the value of your labor and your time is worth much more. When you work for others and then have to pay for food at a significant markup, you are losing a very large proportion of that labor. This is one of the central lies of capitalism that forces you into wage slavery and promotes false narratives like "growing food is most efficient on a huge scale". Efficient to whom? Not to you.
Edit: Another related example is the Berkeley Student Farm on the Oxford Tract and 6 other urban spaces. They are doing some amazing work and it's worth a few moments to read about them: https://www.studentfarms.berkeley.edu/
Don't get me started or I will go on about this in extreme nerdy detail from personal experience.
Please do! I am just starting with some gardening and haven't much experience yet.
Please do! I am just starting with some gardening and haven’t much experience yet.
Uh oh.
Well I'll just mention one thing... just. one. thing. Ok, no, let me do my top beginner mistakes, which seem to all be not understanding what plants need.
- Over-watering. For example, tomatoes (and solanaceae in general) like periodic deep watering and shouldn't be overly moist. I always starve them for water until they start to get a little crispy (literally they look like shit) and do my weekly-ish harvesting the day before watering.
- Not hardening-off starts. Don't plant those peppers in the ground without having them gradually outside over a few days, ending in being out overnight for a day or three.
- Not understanding soil and air temperatures. It's super helpful to know the daytime highs and nightime lows and ideally soil temps as well. Some plants just really won't grow well when it's too hot (lettuce) or too cold (tomatoes, cukes, etc)
- Growing starts in your living room window because it "gets lots of sun". If your plants are leggy and weak it's because they get sun for part of the day and it shifts around too much.
- Assuming you have to nuke every living thing anywhere near your veggies. 95% of all insects are beneficials and if you do not provide habitat for them and/or you use copious pesticides, you are killing more good things than bad. On my last farm we used no pesticides, organic-approved or otherwise. This works if you have pathways of (ideally natives) for beneficials to thrive in. The classic example is flea beetles - they thrive in barren hot soil while the beneficials that would eat them avoid that. So plant your arugula near some grasses (like right up against it) and you will not likely have a flea beetle problem.
Thank you, that was interesting. I would like to subscribe to your newsletter 🙂
But I am not sure I understand point 2. Are you talking about seeds?
But I am not sure I understand point 2. Are you talking about seeds?
People buy or grow "starts" - little baby plants in pots - and often don't let them adjust to being outside before sticking them in the ground.
Ah, gotcha, thanksñ
What are the solutions to #4? Had that problem this year. Something killed about a 1/4 of my tomato and pepper starts because they were still really small when it was time to plant them outdoors (guessing snails or cutworms; I have a lot of both).
What are the solutions to #4? Had that problem this year.
Cutworms and similar (I have armyworms) are very annoying. Standard advice is tilling and keeping things clear of weeds but that has the effect of removing habitat for beneficials. My approach is mechanical removal, which I've found very effective: go out when said critters are active, usually at night, and pick them off. It's labor intensive but you only need to do it 1-2 times. For many worms, they'll bury themselves just under the soil surface during the day so if you lightly till with a hand trowl or something in about a 4-6" circle around the plant you can often find them. I also just over-plant, expecting to lose some - we also have gophers here who take about a 10% tythe on nearly everything. Some folks use cardboard collars around the base of peppers and tomatoes but I didn't find that effective and it was a pain.
Obviously the bigger and stronger the plants are the greater the more damage they can take and still survive. Often really small solanaceae are still susceptible to damping off (too much moisture) or may just not be big enough to withstand the shock of transplanting.
So... a cheap and very effective solution to the "living room window" problem is a mini greenhouse or cold frame of some kind, if you have the space. The idea being to give your starts a more ideal growing environment to strengthen them as much as possible before going in the ground.
Even just a simple 2'x4' cold frame made from scrap wood and recycled glass or plexiglass (or better, double walled greenhouse panels) can help the starts make the transition better. You can still start things inside when it's too cold and be careful to move them around to get maximum sun, but then move it to the cold frame as soon as night time temperatures support it and then let the starts mature in there - they will do much better in the heat and light. I use a passive solar greenhouse made from an old Costco barn frame and covered in proper greenhouse plastic (about $130). I have these dark grey barrels (55 gallon food grade barrels used by factories to hold things like syrups - $15 each) that are filled with water and heat up during the day. This provides enough thermal mass that I can start things even when daytime highs are in the 30s. You can replicate this on a smaller scale in a cold frame with even just a few gallons of water.
Other options include season extension methods like row covers (Remay or Agribon). The idea being to even out temperature extremes as much as to protect from frost. A simple hoop made from metal conduit will last way longer than PVC and can be stuck in the ground better. Heavy row covers like AG-50 will get you a lot of frost protection and even if it's not freezing at night many starts will appreciate the higher nighttime temps. Just be sure to ventilate during the day as it can get too hot. For smaller areas an old blanket or even sheet will help retain some heat. Or alternatively, a small plastic container that you put over the start, usually just at night... like a yoghurt container or bottle of some kind.
I use this last method quite a bit for things like watermelons where I've got 8' spacing and Agribon is just not efficient. I made little "hats" out of wire and scraps of Agribon and cover the mounds (I direct seed) until they germinate and get their true leaves. I have to do this because I grow heirloom varieties that take forever and my season is relatively short.
that's why OP was suggesting we subsidize home (and I'd add allotment) gardens - give people money to plant food and flowers and they'll be better of f both physically and mentally.
and who will till the soil, weed, fight pests, harvest, etc.
govt going to provide the physical labor and extra hours per week that is required too?
I mean I get it. I'm a rich white person with a lot of leisure time and I own property where I can have a garden... but turns out not everyone has this stuff. Half my younger friends have no time and no property on which to garden. And those folks are much better off that say, a single mom of two who rents and is struggling to provide her kids with food because she's working 50 hours a week to pay rent. Should I just tell her to 'make your own garden! that will totally feed your family of three...' just put dozens of hours into your concrete driveway of plastic tubs that will provide you with a few weeks of vegetables, most of which will rot before you can use them... unless you want to devote more time and money into canning.
Gardening is great. But jerking myself off and generalizing and saying everyone else should be doing what i have the luxury to do... just makes me a smug self-righteous ass. People buy food from stores because it's convenient and fast.
Involvement in food production to some degree is involvement in your own freedom and independence from capitalist hegemony. To me it's the opposite of privilege. It's not a luxury and it's so so sad that people think of it in those terms.
Somehow along the way folks were instilled with the idea that growing their own food is hard, not efficient... even equated with being poor or some kind of peasant. And there's a very good reason for this - big industrialized agriculture doesn't work except at huge scales and it takes everyone buying cheetos and hot dogs for it to work. And somehow we got into this rut where you have to work 50 hours a week - paid a fraction of the real value of your labor - to afford the "value-added" food that is not nutritionally dense, tasty or grown sustainably.
The truth is that growing food is about as simple and basic as it gets IF you have the knowledge. It is even more viable if people work collectively to get some of those economies of scale.
So take 10 hours of that week and use it to produce valuable food for yourself and for your neighbors. 2-3 families working 10 hours a week each grows A LOT of food. You do not need a lot of land... indeed there is land out there available to be used for community gardens, for free.
Unlike a lot of folks, I'm not going to say this can't work in every situation because I believe it can. Further, I believe it's an existential necessity.
Do you fertilizer your garden with your own shit?
- Don’t throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
and who will till the soil, weed, fight pests, harvest, etc.
In the case of a home garden, the homeowners, just like it's expected for a homeowner to care for all the other plants on their property.
In the case of an allotment/community garden, community members would provide the labor. That's how they currently work.
I mean I get it. I'm a rich white person with a lot of leisure time and I own property where I can have a garden... but turns out not everyone has this stuff.
I'm confused what the problem is - just because you know some people that wouldn't benefit from a home garden subsidy, doesn't make it a bad idea, if it encourages more people to grow food at home. It's not a one-size-fits-all solution to be sure, but it is a solution that would work for some, with little to no downside that I can conceive of.
Also the whole "you need a lot of land if you want to garden" thing is kind of a myth. You can do a surprising amount in containers, with vertical systems, or even indoors with grow lights or hydroponics these days.
Edit to address your edit:
Gardening is great. But jerking myself off and generalizing and saying everyone else should be doing what i have the luxury to do... just makes me a smug self-righteous ass. People buy food from stores because it's convenient and fast.
I don't think anyone's saying "everyone should garden", just "more people should garden". The original suggestion we're discussing was to subsidize gardening, which would help reduce the barrier to entry and make it a more attractive option. Option being the keyword there - subsidizing something doesn't mean everyone has to do it, and it certainly isn't an attempt to belittle or shame anyone that can't or doesn't want to garden.
Hell yea! Let's bring back victory gardens! With a subsidy!