Who wants to care for a kitchen garden? It’s not as simple as putting seeds into the ground and waiting until it grows. You have to dig up the site. You have to water it in a drought. You have to pull out the weed. You might even have to fight against insects, or use fertilizer. 19 out of 20 people I knew had given up on the idea of a kitchen garden.
You can’t and don’t want to eat 20lbs of tomato in a week. I use maybe 2-4lbs and the rest of it rots or has to be given away. I’m lucky if consume 1/4 of what I produce.
And that’s how crops come in, all at the same time in abundance. It’s not like you can pick 4 tomatoes each day and they just hang out for weeks on the vine. There is about a 4-6 week widow in which all the stuff you have spent 5 months growing, is edible off the vine. You start in April and then you don’t really get anything until August, and then by Mid Sept, the plants stop producing and are dead by Oct.
And if you want to preserve it, that’s a lot more work and you need the space and equipment to store dozens and dozens of jarred/canned veg. And at that point it’s no longer a small kitchen garden.
oh and by the way if you give me that ‘community sharing!’ stuff. no. literally everyone’s crops are also coming in at the same time. that’s why you see people leaving baskets of veg on the stops all around and nobody takes it, because they already have their own from their own gardens.
That is very different from a commercial farm who is able to have dozens of rotating crops and crop varieties with the expertise to manage it and also the ability to distribute it commercially.
Also, groundhogs will fuck up your garden, and they dig tunnels and climb fences. You have to basically build a big cage around your garden, floor included.
I box trap them (they love cantaloupes) and haul them off to a neighboring town. I’m not sure how humane it is since they usually tear off their claws trying to get out of the trap. And momma hog is too smart to go in the trap, so I only get the kids.
Who wants a kitchen garden?
Who wants to care for a kitchen garden? It’s not as simple as putting seeds into the ground and waiting until it grows. You have to dig up the site. You have to water it in a drought. You have to pull out the weed. You might even have to fight against insects, or use fertilizer. 19 out of 20 people I knew had given up on the idea of a kitchen garden.
Then there’s me who has a black hand. Damned near every plant I’ve intentionally tried to grow has died, including the sturdy ones.
I am a successful gardener.
You can’t and don’t want to eat 20lbs of tomato in a week. I use maybe 2-4lbs and the rest of it rots or has to be given away. I’m lucky if consume 1/4 of what I produce.
And that’s how crops come in, all at the same time in abundance. It’s not like you can pick 4 tomatoes each day and they just hang out for weeks on the vine. There is about a 4-6 week widow in which all the stuff you have spent 5 months growing, is edible off the vine. You start in April and then you don’t really get anything until August, and then by Mid Sept, the plants stop producing and are dead by Oct.
And if you want to preserve it, that’s a lot more work and you need the space and equipment to store dozens and dozens of jarred/canned veg. And at that point it’s no longer a small kitchen garden.
oh and by the way if you give me that ‘community sharing!’ stuff. no. literally everyone’s crops are also coming in at the same time. that’s why you see people leaving baskets of veg on the stops all around and nobody takes it, because they already have their own from their own gardens.
That is very different from a commercial farm who is able to have dozens of rotating crops and crop varieties with the expertise to manage it and also the ability to distribute it commercially.
Also, groundhogs will fuck up your garden, and they dig tunnels and climb fences. You have to basically build a big cage around your garden, floor included.
one of my friend has a pretty elaborate garden setup.
he has a groundhog execution chamber too. he has to gas and kill about 6 of them each year.
I box trap them (they love cantaloupes) and haul them off to a neighboring town. I’m not sure how humane it is since they usually tear off their claws trying to get out of the trap. And momma hog is too smart to go in the trap, so I only get the kids.
Not my garden :) groundhogs don’t exist here