cizra , 1 year ago

I agree with other comments here (about quality, cost of growing, availability, difficulties and especially with tomato varieties being optimized for convenient commercial farming, not taste.

I’m gardening for psychological safety, myself.

When I was a kid, Soviet Union collapsed, economy was in chaos, and though I never went hungry, fancier food (like meat) was unavailable commercially, so we raised it, grew our potatoes and basic veggies. It was a ton of work.

At the moment, stores are full of yummies. However, I can imagine them yummies disappearing - there was a brief food scare at the beginning of Covid (or whenever it was), then the Ukraine war started, scaring the whole Eastern Europe into thinking “Hey, my country is not too different from Ukraine - can we be next?”

Thus we bought a farm, last year, and started a basic garden. Last year we planted some basic foodstuffs - tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, garlic. Two kinds of mint for tea. They produced next to nothing, though. This year, it’s more tomatoes, more cucumbers, potatoes, a selection of different herbs. The mints are perennial, and they’re crazy weeds - you wouldn’t be able to get rid of the beastly things if you wanted to. The yields are OK - I counted around 10 mid-sized potatoes grown from 1 large-sized potato planted, for something like 3x ROI (sample size: 1 plant, the rest keep growing). Tomatoes are sweet and tastier than anything.

You’ll ask if it’s worth the effort. Now I have a summer home (yet with a fiber optic network connection, yum!), for kids to run around in. I invest minor effort and minor funds (except for the farm, heh, hand tools are inexpensive), getting some food that I need to acquire anyway. Growing foodstuffs is linearly scalable. In the possible event of dung-ventilation, I’ll have land, hand tools, and some basic proficiency in growing stuff. Thus it’s like prepping, without really spending any money. Anything I buy will get used to grow food and recoups costs within the season. Oh, and I’m getting some badly needed exercise, spading my plant beds.

I don’t have a plan for the case of zombie invasion (or hungry mobs spilling out of large cities), except being in the middle of nowhere. I’m hoping this scenario won’t come to pass. If it does - the hypothetical robbed me won’t be any worse off than a city dweller, either.

That reminds me - I should call my neighbor and order a tractor trailer full of bullshit (that’s 15 tons, IIRC), costing 200€. I can pay now, get it here, and let it ripen for a couple of years.