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Picking up gardening at any age is a good thing not only as a way to stay active and keep your pantry better stocked but you also get a good sense of accomplishment
Neighbor tried to plant potatoes. She got about six pounds worth of top and no tuber.
We spent weeks debugging and still don’t know what went wrong.
Potatoes you have to keep mounding up with dirt to force the plant to grow more roots (tubers) instead of the leafy tops.
TIL. Thanks.
Potato tubers are not actually roots. They are modified stems. So the surest way to force more potatoes is to “hill” them. In the commercial fields this is done with a huge tractor raking soil from in between planting rows and piling it up on the plants. You essentially bury the plants stem as it grows taller. Then the buds on the stem will push out stolons (horizontal underground stems.) these will terminate in tubers, aka: potatoes!
Source: did potato disease research for my PhD.
Additional edit: loose/sandy soil is critical. Too dense of soil and your tubers can’t expand well.
Alert: agronomist infiltrated the chat
Hacker voice: “I’m in 😎”
Does this apply to any other root vegetables? Beets?
Warning: I am not a beet expert. But I believe beets are actual roots. Just like carrots. And I think you only get one beer per plant? Burying the stem would just make it harder for new leaves to come up.
Potatoes are pretty unique in this sense. Even sweet potatoes are not the same.
Don’t plant them too close to each other. It doesn’t work.
six pounds worth of top
Where is this neighbor located? Asking for a friend 👀
Top? No tuber?
All stems and leaves and flowers and shit. But no potatoes growing in the roots of the plants.
Thanks. Is that unusual? I always assumed potatoes were an easy grow.
That is unusual, because yeah, potatoes are easy to grow
Nice 🥒
“It comes out of the fuckin’ ground. I couldn’t believe it!”
Upvoted and rewatched. Every time.
You cannot lose!
Mitchell and Webb have a relevant sketch for almost every situation.
You know what comes out of their bums?!
I need to germinate the marijuana seeds that I have
Pretty sure it’s this youtuber called Pro Home Cook. He and his brother used to do home recipes with limited pantry size and tools. But he got too big and started doing fermentation, sprouting, brewing and gardening.
frantically types on keyboard with the cord stuffed into the dirt
Just got root access.
Nice one. Time to traverse the tree.
Spanning Tree?
I hear networking one of those is difficult.
New life hack: this is what some of the very first human civilizations did to spend their time
Turn your life around with this ancient trick!
You don’t need the future, turn back time to the good ol’ days.
tiktok feed of threads user.
Pretty sure zoomers just troll boomers who genuinely think the new generation is stupid
Also true
As a millennial…zoomer humor is soooo much better than boomer humor.
Zoomer humor: playing dumb and trolling people
Boomer humor: “a f-g, a n-gro, and a sp-c walk into a bar…”
You don’t like boomer humor knee slapper jokes like
“My wife is a bitch, please take her”
And
“Oh look it’s a homosexual”
?
I don’t think I’ve ever seen “oh look it’s a homosexual” as a boomer humor joke, but definitely a lot of using LGBT as a sideshow.
Hang with my dad for a bit. When he’s lucid, he’ll pop Forrest Gump voices, poke fun at gender neutral pronouns and talk loudly in the open about my gay neighbors (who are amazing). All this often leads to a fight and learning that it’s not ok to verbally abuse boomers, but it’s ok for them to verbally abuse everyone else. This privilege comes with age… so I’m told.
Trust me, you’re not missing out
Picture of a Minion with the caption: “Tuesday? I thought you said WINE-day.”
As another millennial… you’re not wrong, but you basically put the bar on the floor there. The funniest thing about most boomer humor is that they actually they’re clever.
Infinite food glitch.
Their backyard soon:
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Fantastic garden
There are more. Just search “dacha garden” and you will find.
Some things are just super easy to grow, others take so much effort its too much for the average person. But hell yeah, grow ur own food if u are lucky enough to own a garden.
Lettuce and tomatoes are surprisingly good value. I’d put them top tier.
Not sure what else is really good. Beans are easy but you never get enough.
Yeah. When I lived in NW Florida (ugh), jalapenos grew like weeds in a small pot. Always had way too many.
Also a fun fact: in early spring you can often see green grass-like shoots growing before the grass starts and are quite tall. Those are wild alliums, the same family as garlic, onions and scallions.
Florida gardener too.
Jalapenos do great, okra grows in the summer! The summer! Mustard greens will too, and the Stokes. Purple sweet potatoes. In the cooler seasons, collards, lettuces, fennel, I’ve had surprising success with broccoli and cauliflower. Tomatoes I can grow whenever but birds eat them. Radishes fail me every time. No carrots or radishes have worked, ever… I just learned asparagus is perennial here, going to try that too.
My wife and I just moved from a townhouse to an actual house with a backyard so we can garden again. We’re around the Sarasota Area and the yard is really soft and sandy. Pretty sure something’s digging under there which is why it’s so soft… But they were there first so what’re ya gonna do. Any suggestions for planting this summer? Definitely gonna try Okra
Congratulations, I didn’t know anyone could afford a house in Sarasota right now, wow!
Yes to okra, it loves our summer, unless you have the nematodes that love it more than we do. Jalafuego hybrid jalapenos are robust plants and spicy peppers that can survive summer. Hibiscus likes our summer, and you are far enough south to grow mangoes.
For the garden garden you might do better with raised bed and some better soil over the sandy soil, but mangoes and citrus like it. “Well drained” as they say.
Oh God no we’re still renting. We bounced around the idea of buying something but prices are insane, and we’re not sure we want to settle in Florida. The home insurance cost and the increasing risk of big storms would make me too anxious.
Thanks for the advice! We were definitely thinking raised beds, but wanted to try our luck with a few in-ground things.
We call it onion grass. I’m always yelling at my dog for eating them.
Are they bad for dogs? Or are you mad cause you wanted them?
I know cultivated onion and garlic are definitely poisonous to dogs. (and cats) I’m not sure though if wild allium contains the same chemical, and in the same amount, but it would be likely, which could easily lead to the hemolytic anemia.
Technically it’s poisonous to dogs, yeah. It’s a mild poison, but like chocolate (and grapes and raisins), they shouldn’t have it.
Leeks are part of the Allium family (which also includes onion, chives, and garlic) and are poisonous to dogs and cats. Garlic is considered to be about 5-times as potent as onion and leeks. Certain breeds and species are more sensitive, including cats and Japanese breeds of dogs (e.g., Akita, Shiba Inu).
Grapes and raisins are a different class. Alliums and chocolate are bad, sure, but if your dog has a bad reaction to grapes and really raisins, it can be 2-3 raisins cause kidney failure. They’re not quite sure about the mechanism, only that it doesn’t take much and isn’t an always thing.
Oh yes, they’re not a “mild” on the poison scale compared to like, grass onion and such.
Very true.
I struggle so hard with peppers. Jalapeños growing like weeds sounds like a dream.
The growing season is so short here, you need to start them inside 2 months before planting them outside if you want them ready before the first frost in sept gets them.
Right now I only have an inside. My balcony gets morning sun, but not for very long. :(
Could always get a little tent and a grow light to grow them indoors. Peppers need decent light
It might benefit you to know that pepper plants can be kept alive nearly indefinitely if you give them good enough conditions. So if you keep them in a pot, you can trim them and move them inside over cold months (bare stems is fine as long as they don’t dry out), and then in spring they are already super well established and big and start putting out peppers really early.
I never do well with new pepper plants, but second season they produce like crazy.
Thanks you for the tips, I actually didn’t know they were perennial. That said, I think they just aren’t too fond of the climate here. I’d need a greenhouse (and space outdoors) or a heating mat and a decent sun light. I tried with chilies the other year, and even got a few fruits, but they were small and never ripened. The plant really struggled. To be fair, the plant was an experiment from the get-go. I germinated it from seeds I got in a cheapo chili flake jar from Lidl so I didn’t have huge expectations to begin with.
I will note that when I moved to MD the plant did well but grew like 1 pepper all year. Gave up after that. Heartburn also made it less viable to eat so many. :p
I’m not sure what MD is, my brain just thinks “markdown” or medicine doctor. I hope your heartburn is doing better now!
Maryland! US state on the eastern seaboard near the capital, Washington, D.C.
I have to ask. When I hear Maryland I think of a biscuit brand. Is Maryland known for chocolate chip biscuits or is the biscuit brand completely unrelated?
I’ve never heard of that before but I did find this when I looked:
https://www.burtonsbiscuits.com/our-brands/maryland-cookies/
Perhaps the US state of Maryland?
I live in Norway and one year I planted 10 chili plants. I treated those plants like royalty and in the end I got like maybe 2 chilis per plant lol
Yeah, that echoes my experience here in Sweden. I guess the reason we use so much rotted fish in our cuisine is because we had no other way to introduce stronger flavours. 😭
Is garlic easy? Uk climate
Yeah pretty easy, have a go. Maybe a bit too mild to be ideal but if we’re talking home production that doesn’t matter much. There’s a big farm on the Isle of Wight so we can’t be too far off.
Wild garlic might be a better option if you’re able to forage for it.
I do walk about a lot so I’ll keep an eye out. Thanks.
Oh i have no idea, i have never grown garlic so far.
Often you can get hardier breeds and i would expect it to be possible in the UK as longs as its not freezing.
This looks like a decent guide. Basically lots of sun, not too much water, lil bit of fertilizer and you are sure to get something.
Thank you
It’s relatively easy, because most pests won’t eat it and they are pretty frost resistant. There are winter and summer varieties, so don’t mix them up.
I live near a garlic town and it gets fuckin hot there
Gilroy?
Similarly: How to rob a bank without getting caught
Tomatoes are easy to grow! They just take a fuck ton of water.
I hear they’re much tastier than what you buy in the store.
This is accurate; grocery store tomatoes are bred for durability rather than taste. The canned tomatoes down the soup aisle are honestly better than the fresh ones in the produce section. A large pot in a sunny corner of your back porch can do a lot better than your local supermarket.
If they are not organic they put fertilizers on them which is basically salt that makes the cells swell with water but not nutrition nor taste.
depends on who grows them, we finally started getting domestic tomatoes in stores again here in sweden and they actually smell and taste like tomatoes should.
They don’t need to use the ones that are bred for durability if the shipping takes like an hour by truck…
that applies to pretty much every vegetable out there.
Supposed to be even more, particularly because you can pick at peak ripeness. Store ones they pick far beyond ripe so they transport and handle better.
yes, and the same goes for pretty much every other vegetable (and fruit, for that matter) out there.
You can harvest potatoes at peak ripeness. They don’t bruise like tomatoes.
It depends on the cultivar, but usually yes!
You can feed your dog tomatoes, and you don’t even have to bother with seeding!
Or fertilizer!
You don’t need a dog for this, you can do it yourself.
Cries in having no sunlight in the apartment. Mine didn’t survive the dark apartment life, so can’t confirm.
Tomatoes and garlic, what else could you possibly need tbh
Basil, onion.
Potatoes too.
Guy next door grows potatoes in a dozen old bathtubs. He is really old and hasn’t bought any supermarket-potatoes in centuries.
Spinach, peas
Eggs.
Btw on average, how many eggs grow on an eggplant?
Depends on how many chickens can fit on the eggplant. I think 1 is the max.
Gardening is cool and absolutely can decrease your spending, but I want to take a moment to talk about how the efficiency of a home garden will never match industrial farming and that the cost effectiveness of fertilizers required to grow all of your own food would negate the savings unless you’ve got your own ammonia mine and recycle all of your poop.
So the last part I’m way ahead, it’s all stored in several tanks in my backyard.
I love talking about this stuff so I was wondering if you plan to treat the urine with sodium to make urea as a nitrate fertilizers and if so what sodium source are you using?
Urine? Ugh dude, gross!! I’m only storing the poop of course
But theres SO MUCH nitrogen in Urine.
Compost is a home project (and available in some cities as part of the waste management system) and nutritious for plants; but most of the things I grow as food I don’t fertilize much or any. The fruit trees once a year or so, the garden soil sometimes in between planting or when growing watermelon or squash, bigger things do need some extra fertilizer (and tomatoes like some) but most seem to do fine with good soil and crop rotation/companion planting. Farmers have to use more because they’ve depleted the soil with monoculture. I still don’t think it’s cost effective when time is factored in, but it’s better fresher food and not as fussy as farming.
Genius, you just keep putting back less than you take and it lasts forever~! How come nobody thought of that? Snark put aside for a moment, I think composting on a large scale should be done, even in urban environments, but it won’t impact the statement I made even a single bit.
Dunno what to tell you - different plants put different things into and out of the soil, we cut the grass in the yard, and the bushes and things, all sorts of stuff can go into the pile that becomes nutrients and of course plants eat sunshine, not just soil nutrients. It’s been working a few years and the soil keeps improving.
Farming is a whole different thing and more reliant on fertilizer.
Efficiency in produce per monetary cost. But for efficiency of human health per natural resources, I think gardening might be a winner.
I think you’re abstracting too much to try and make your point. What on earth does “efficiency of human health per natural resources” mean in comparison to “efficiency in produce per monetary cost”. I think youre just lost in a little too much sauce when trying to justify your view.
It was already well established that only the wealthy can afford a consistently healthy lifestyle, but thanks for chiming in.
Sounds pretty defeatist to me.
Defeatist is accepting a system that harms the poor. Separating yourself from the system is unrealistic for the vast majority and doesn’t fix it.
That seems to be what you’re doing. “Only the wealthy can live healthy” and giving up on discussion to change that.
I see solutions to make Industrial Agriculture work to help all people: land redistribution, regulation, subsidization of what is actually needed. I see no way to make gardens at home work for every person, it’s a complete nonstarter.
You’re the defeatist, here. You’re fleeing from the problems.
*proposes way to help*
“Noo! You’re fleeing from the problems”
Good. You go ahead and work on you proposals to improve industrial agriculture. I might not think that’s a complete solution, but it’s not defeatist. Saying, “only the wealthy can eat healthy” and leaving it at that, sounded defeatist.
But I hope you can agree my support of more people doing home gardening - also not a complete solution - is a suggestion of how to improve things, not defeatist. You might disagree with its utility. You certainly disagree with it being a solution for everybody. But need you attack it as defeatist and running from problems?
Okay I’ve re-read back to your first comment and I think I see what you mean, now.
You mean, that you see gardening as something available only to the wealthy, so discussion of gardening helping with health is of no relevance/help to the question of how to improve the situation for the less wealthy, right?
I see your point. When I chimed in with gardening’s ‘efficiency’, I wasn’t trying to think of it as a solution for all people. That said, I do think some of the less industrial methods of farming are worth more effort. Maybe more people having gardens, rooftop aquaponics allotments. Small/local farming collectives. These things can help the balance be more in favour of getting the most health and human benefit, rather than the most money for shareholders and owners.
Industrial farming, as commonly practiced, is unsustainable. We basically just turn fossil fuels into food, and degrade our environment (including our food production capacity) while doing it.
Vegetable gardening can definitely save you money, including negations. Most people, including myself, just do it as a hobby though.
I started vegetable gardening last year, and all my inputs, so far, have been free (with the exception of seeds, seed starting soil, and various inexpensive tools). I’ve used chicken manure from Craigslist (had to shovel it myself), home made compost (grass/weed clippings, arborist wood chips, kitchen scraps), and sometimes urine for extra nitrogen (lol). I’ve noticed that with adding compost on top of my soil, I don’t really need much, if any, fertilizer (manure or urine).
Nitrogen-fixing plants can also be used to bring more nitrogen into your little garden ecosystem.
I haven’t used any pesticides or herbicides. I just hand pull any weeds when I see them and mulch with either wood chips or paper with compost on top. I hand-pick caterpillars when I see them (or hunt for them when I see a lot of damage), and just throw them into my lawn (they don’t seem to be able to make it back).
I’m still learning and experimenting, and have had certain species decimated by pests (brassicas), but I think I can experiment with timing, varieties, and hope natural predators will move in (I started planting plants in my perrenial beds that are supposed to attract beneficial insects, and put a birdhouse near my garden). If I find I can’t grow certain crops or varieties well in my environment, I just won’t. I save the seeds from my healthiest plants, so hopefully, this will eventually select for varieties that do well in my particular conditions.
No matter how you slice it, surviving completely off of home gardening would not be any more sustainable than industrial agriculture. Just more costly.
