this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2023
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I just got into gardening. Raised beds, apple trees. Feels a lot more like farming at this point. It's a great worthwhile activity, but I'm not sure I could actually feed myself AND maintain a full time job at the same time. Between watering, pest control, pruning, etc it's quite a lot of work. I could see maybe saving a few bucks on apples and potatoes though for sure lol.
If your goal is feeding yourself and you family beyond just "having veggies from the garden sometimes", it is fundamentally impossible for an individual to do that. The reasoning behind that is that the only reason we as a society are able to have jobs that are not "farmer" and "cook" and "someone who makes tools for farming" is that the industrial revolution has brought us mass-scale farming with tractors and reacted tools that can do in seconds what would take you hours to do.
I got the impression that in The Walking Dead when a community gets a vegetable garden, it’s barely going to produce enough to sustain many people; they’d need more than that to fight off starvation.
It does make me wonder about the practicality of the story of The Martian, where he’s only trying to extend his time limit and does it with tons of high-calorie potatoes.
As fiction goes, it's relatively plausible - Watney's a good enough botanist to be selected for the space program, and in the bit of the novel/film he's working on potatoes, he's not doing much else, so can dedicate as much time as is necessary to get what he needs. For plot-convenience reasons, he's in a situation where he's got enough space, starter potatoes and existing food to make it all work, too. Andy Weir got those quantities by consulting experts rather than guessing, so they should be realistic.
Yea I'm def not trying to do that lol.
I have gardeners who visit twice monthly for the front yard and they've been instructional and helpful with the garden. They weed it and tell me how much to water it and other care needs.
They cut my frustration and work by 75%. Highly recommend hiring gardeners.
Tempting BUT.. I got clean off hard drugs a bit over a year ago so it's kinda MY project and therapy yknow. I wanna figure it out. Still in the frustrating start up and learning phase, but even now it's pretty fulfilling. Maybe in 15 years when my back is broken I may do that 😄
Hey, good on ya for staying the course! I completely agree that gardening is an incredibly satisfying therapy, a meditation even. Back in the day, I got into cannabis cultivation and ended up more fulfilled by the growing part and less about the end product — though my friends never seemed to mind the free gifts every few weeks, heh. My mom was the same way with her vegetable garden when I was little, now that I think of it: all the neighbors looked forward to her tomatoes, long beans, snap peas, and strawberries. 🥰
I think this really depends on what you plant. We have blackberries (which do very well in our area) and they need no work whatsoever besides picking. We probably get a few hundred dollars worth a year.
I’ve found raised beds to be a waste of money. I’ve had better luck just amending my soil. I would look into what grows best in your area. It will be the least upkeep and most reward.
Yea absolutely I agree. I have lots of berries too, and most of the stuff is native. I'm just getting started so obviously it's a lot of work and time consuming right now so I guess my point is that that should be considered first lol. I have a ton of animals and pests that need to be kept at bay as well and that's a whole different battle (:
I live in a super rocky mountain area, amending the soil would be insane work here, but not impossible. It took me all day to plant 2 apple trees. HuGE boulders and rock, but luckily they like the kind of soil we have as long as I put down phosphorus in fall.
I'm still figuring it out. And obviously it would save you money, but perhaps not worth the trade off at least initially, and probably outright impossible if you are already struggling hard.
Rocky soil is a whole other beast! Deer are a pain too. Good luck! Location makes or breaks a lot of gardening