Posted on 03/10/2022 6:43:41 AM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
This thread reminds me of the scene in “Second Hand Lions”.
And know where it’s come from.
If you have to BUY EVERYTHING, you are way behind the curve.
(Can teach kids about lots of things with a garden)
1/4 acre is way more than most casual gardeners would be able to handle. a 4x8 spot in the sun is enouigh to start with ONE or TWO items you like to eat. Basic herbs like Mint, Tarragon, Oregano, and Basil are so easy . . .
It takes many, many years to get a real healthy garden into production. These days, most folks don’t (can’t) stay in one place long enough to make that happen.
Most real gardeners I know have used free leftover junk and scraps to “build” their hardscape.
Heirloom varieties make quality seeds to use the next year.
Gardens get refreshed with WASTE from other places like food scraps, quality animal poop, and RAIN and SUNSHINE, cover crops to plow under.
Gardening can be down with very low CASH output. Just takes brains, and a little muscle, or those G-d given things called “Teenagers”.
The guy forgot to include price of fertilizer, compost, and top soil, and labor cost.
Beyond that if the shortages continue
—
Plus, you can buy the special Have-A-Heart live insect trap for those special moments when your meat supplies run out.
Two, I live in an area with a relatively short growing season.
Three, I live in an area with terrible soil. I would literally have to have topsoil trucked in. It is difficult to get anything other than native plants to grow.
Four, does this figure in canning/freezing/preserving? My cooking/eating habits don't generally require lots of onions, then lots of cucumbers, then sometime later lots of some other veggie. How do you even out availability with use?
I'm sure it is a useful and fun hobby - just not my cup of tea. I have hobbies that pay off for me.
It may not save money now but it will provide food if and when none available, which is looking like more and more of a possibility.
I don’t think so. If I add up ALL my costs each tomato or ear of corn costs me five bucks.
But I enjoy it. It’s my hobby and I love doing it!
I agree with you, what little gardening I do is not cost effective, I enjoy doing it, besides the enjoyment I like to think in a SHTF situation at least I have some idea of what to do.
I usually buy a hanging basket of cherry tomatoes.
Then all I have to do is water it a pick the fruit.
No weeding. No bending over. Hang it off the porch on the south side.
This lady is right.
I own a small hobby farm..Time=Money Its hard to find doing anything that makes the Money>Time
Right now I am putting in a apple orchard - specializing in apples good for craft hard cider. Selling the apples
wholesale is not worth the time. Value-adding by making cider out of it might make it worth it.
as for SHTF food to grow...cant be potatoes.
The money aspect will be immaterial once food can’t be found in the stores.
cant beat potoatoes
We grow our own Vegetables every year, they taste way better than what you can buy, Zucchini, Corn and marinara sauce still in freezer from last year, plus we have a dozen or so chickens that give us 10-12 eggs a Day. Cherry, Peach, Pear, Apple and Plum trees also. will plant another 20 in a couple weeks
Getting Garden ready in another week or two
My water bill several years ago in my hot dry part of Texas went up about $85 a month when I water outside. I think for Me, it is cheaper to buy the vegetables we get trucked in from Mexico. I like gardening. Here, squash Vine borers are the worst. 60 miles north in ranch country, grasshoppers eat everything.
live in NE Florida, so I don’t get snow and ice and can grow stuff year round.
Yaah, we moved from north central Florida 25 acres, with a quarter acre garden and a crapton of flowers, shrubs, and horse manure compost, to western slope Colorado (only daughter lives here , and not moving to FL) where it takes an auger, pick, and water to dig one fencepost in four hours. And cactus plants seem to thrive.
PS nothing beats a home grown tomato.
But i digress, garden this spring is going to happen, still have horse manure compost. Heck, I’m Irish, with ancestors that made topsoils from seaweed.
Easy there, cowboy……but you’re not wrong.
Do you include ammunition prices for when Biden collapses the economy and I have to fight for every cucumber... Or for squirrels.
At least you have soil. Here in NH the only thing most of this state is good at growing is rocks and pine trees.
I planted a hydranga tree for my wife. I dug a 3’ diameter hole one foot deep. I removed a wheelbarrow full of rocks for that hole. One the size of a basketball.
A few years later I had a guy come in with a Kubota mini excavator. Here cleared the boulders/rocks on the surface of about an acre. He ended up building a new rock wall about 100’ long.
I also had him dig 5 holes with the excavator to plant fruit trees. I filled the holes with loam. Then planted the fruit trees.
I have hobbies that pay off for Me.
If all you can do is make wooden spoons, i can guarantee that an any farmer’s market , your stand will be as busy as everyone else growing produce. And yours will count as a garden , of spoons. ( Can’t cook with out a good spoon!)
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