“I bought seeds, followed the instructions on the seed packet, and grew corn in the backyard. It didn’t do very well.”
And that’s the problem Ari, you at 9 years old back then were better educated than many of the idiots that graduate from Harvard these days. Most public high schoolers couldn’t get through the instructions of the back of a seed pack. They will starve - bet on it.
Well, I spent my formative years on a large farm and think of myself as a country girl. Last year I decided to tear up half the back yard and plant vegetables. It was an expensive disaster. Part of the reason is that my yard, like many in the East, was carved from what had been woodland, and that meant the soil had to be conditioned. It was filled with roots and rocks that don’t affect lawn growing but does make the soil hard to cultivate. The pH had to be adjusted. It required lashings of fertilizer. I had to pour tons of city water on it, and of course city water is chlorinated and not the best for watering a garden. Overall the yield was extremely disappointing.
I’m going to give it another try this year, but those turned out to be very expensive vegetables.