There would certainly be struggles with some of that plan. If trash dumps were legally obligated to make good mulch and compost with a trained staff that would mean big corporations like Home Depot, Lowes, small companies like nurseries and the guys who sell the products to all of them would be losing a lot of money. Mulch goes for 2-5 dollars a bag here and you can use a lot of mulch and compost where I am. Not sure how much compost goes for around here. Since companies bottom line would be hurt there would be serious lobbying not to have congress or the states to pass that law. Trash dumps would not generally just have a well trained person providing it without it being law. Not at least nation wide that is. As with community gardens that is much harder than you think too. Schools have started to start community gardens. My mom is a teacher and her school has started a community garden years ago. It has not been much of a success. One year her old principle got in a argument with the person in charge of running the community garden so the person running it tore everything down. Needless to say that was a bust and all perennials were to back to year one. Another issue is they struggle to have volunteers actually work on the garden because it is done during the summer time and kids are out of school then. Another issue is the people actually working on it don’t know what they are doing so the end harvest has pests like fungus gnats. In other words a community garden in order to be successful has to have people who know what they are doing, self irrigation so you don’t need people watering it, you still need people periodically coming in to do routine weeding and make sure everything is good, you need stable people at the top end running it and so on. Needless to say not everyone has that. That is my issue with community gardens at least
Why do people take their car to get an oil change or rotate tires or replace wiper blades? All of those things are easy for most people yet auto shops still profit from them. Same idea with easy fruit. People are either lazy or willing to pay for others to do the work for them.
And yet it happens. A lot. There are quite a few landfills that already have a compost program and plenty of jurisdictions that already establish a bunch of community gardens.
The liberty gardens I mentioned, the ones that in 1943 outproduced industrial farming on fruits and vegetables. There was no law mandating a single one of them.
What I am saying is people have veered away from that thinking since 1943. The younger generations are like us and will think about planting edibles because we don’t have as much but many of the middle class and older people are switched to flower gardens. Many can outproduce the commercial gardeners per acre. The commercial guys are trying to cut labor as much as possible to make as much profit. This means they plant in rows where tractors can go through as harvest unless it is some plant that can’t be machine harvested. I think brambles cannot be machine harvested from what I have heard for example. This means they have nice neat rows with nothing under it. A person who knows what they are doing can out produce farms per acre by planting in layers like a forest would be. You have the tree at the top, a bush at the middle and a ground cover at the bottom. By doing this your basically mimic how a natural forest works and you can maximize yields. I learned about this technique years ago when I learned about food forests. There are entire channels dedicated to learning how to maximize yield. Like I said if you play the long game you can really get good yields if you know what you are doing with perennial plants.
I’m currently reading a nice two volume set about it.
My city in Northern California gave us “token” ( too small) kitchen waste bins, and started collecting food waste along with our garden waste several months ago.
I’m not disagreeing with you. Your average citizen is rather hopeless, to put it kindly. Sometimes it makes me wonder if democracy is all that it cracked up to be. Then again the alternatives have not proven to be an improvement.
Heck look at history, many changes have taken place that at first felt impossible to accomplish. All we can do is our part.
As much as many don’t want to admit it the only democracy on earth by the meaning on democracy is one of the countries in Europe. The USA is considered a democratic republic and not a democracy. We elect those who vote for us. I believe in 20 something states the electoral college does not have to vote according to what the people voted as in that state which has happened 4 times. The most recent being the 2016 election. The reality is we have very little say on how things go in America. There has been issues many have wanted to happen but have never actually been passed by the level of government.
100s of millions have died last century from communism/ socialism and dictators. yet we believe people in our government who give it a different name and push it on us here. people need to research history or we are doomed to repeat it! regardless of party people should see it as it is. people lie for money and power since the beginning of time. why shouldnt be any different now. smoke and mirrors. oldest trick in the book but its working. America bombed / killed germany/ italy and japan in WW2 until they surrendered. then spent billions feeding and rebuilding these countries to help its people rebound then accepted them as a ally to this day. no other ruling conquering Army has ever done that in history. this country has always stood for freedom and equality for all. why do we want to change that? think about it! money and power! the root of all evil. sorry mods. do as you will.
there’s a lot of people, younger people, on social media talking about gardening. tiktok is a great example of a site that was built to distract but is being used for other things instead. there’s canners, orchardists, gardeners, farmers and ranchers on there showing what and how they do everything.
a lot of these sites online it’s all about what you are interested in. you sign up and they show you crap, you have to hit “not interested” on it and search for “garden”, “orchard”, etc and start looking at and watching that stuff. I don’t see videos less than 3 minutes on there very often, most of what I’m seeing is people explaining techniques, showing what’s growing in their zone, or art and historical videos (another interests I’ve got).
I remember when they said putting us kids in front of the TV would rot our brains, ads would destroy our attention spans. I haven’t seen that. it’s just modern culture pushing people to work more and harder and so they’ve no time for fun, they’ve got to pack all the fun into a really short window.
any rate newer social media is all about what you make of it, you’ll find what you want to find.
@steveb4 every economic system has big death counts. slavery killed millions, that’s capitalism. there’s going to be trouble any time a few people have too much power and money, no matter what you call the system they use to get it, I think.
This year my property yielded 113 large round bales. That type of yield in hay takes around 200 pounds to the acre of fertilizer. The hay the cows and horses eat comes from places like mine. Synthetic Nitrogen Fertilizer in the U.S. • farmdoc daily. You have likely heard me bring up thats It’s been 100 years since Fritz Haber found a way to synthesize nitrogen The miracle of nitrogen - #13 by clarkinks
Follow the money… now the corporations have a say… thanks Citizens United.
Michigan’s grow industry in general has been in disarray since much talent has migrated to the cannabis industry. But as people get educated in growing their own, maybe there will be another pool of somewhat knowledgeable/ trainable people. Why unload trailers in 90deg heat when you can make more trimming in the AC.
I have no seen too much if anything labeled from Michigan anyway. Most of our stuff comes from California or overseas. Anything tropical seems to come from overseas and all of the peaches, cherries, nectarines etc. seem to come from California. I know Oregon has the hazelnut industry up there. I still have heard Michigan is a good growing area but have just not seen anything labeled as such or any industries talking about the state specifically like Comice pears or the Hazelnut industry with Oregon. Plus if we are talking about favorable places to farm I would rather farm in Palisade CO or Oregon than Michigan if I was a farmer.
Michigan is known for the northern highbush blueberries, and the fruitbelt along the lake, and ornamentals. Nothing like Cali or Oregon with hazelnuts.
that may change. the west coast grows euro. hazels and finally got E.F.B which this type has no immunity. so now there is a race to develop hybrid hazels of which the American crosses are already mostly immune. thats great for the east coast and midwest as their programs are much further along.
I have noticed a lot of people realizing that they don’t have a pension any more, they’re getting older, and they don’t want to keep selling useless stuff to rich people any more, or whatever they do. There are a lot of people in their 40’s to 60’s who are realizing how much health care costs, and the best way to good health is good nutrition and exercise, like working in your garden. Cancer gets a lot of people and so does heart disease. I think a lot of people are starting to think about gardening as a form of health care, and making a positive contribution to the Earth and to society. I notice a lot of people looking jealous when I tell them I’m retired, even though I work half the time, but I go home and harvest food. I bring a lot of plants to the gardens at school. I bet people will continue to ask us questions about this as the years go on.
John S
PDX OR
A lot of the European hazelnuts like I have seen for sale seem to have at least some EFB resistance. Most of the ones I see have been bred by Oregon University for that reason in fact. Varieties like Jefferson, Theta, Yamhill, Polly O, Macdonald and way more are thought to have resistance and some even be immune. Of course the American varieties sold are immune but there are very few American varieties. I found edible landscaping was selling a self fertile American hazelnut and sells some of the few other well known American varieties. I think all the ones One Green World sells state they are Euro hazelnuts and have some resistance. How much depends on the plant.
hmm… ive heard the opposite but they have started to breed resistance into them. could be old info. i read.
All the videos I watched giving information on how to grow hazelnuts talked about the industry in a very American hazelnut point of few. Like I said University of Oregon has had a major breeding program in breeding hazelnuts that are European and are either resistant or immune to EFB. Hardiness is a issue having been bred in Oregon but EFB is less of a issue. Beaked hazelnut is hardy to something like zone 2 but is rarely sold. There are varieties that are as old as can be and contradict the hazelnut growing videos too. Winkler only gets about 6 feet, is resistant to EFB being an American hazelnut and is considered self fertile but has been around since around 1918 I believe. Theta was University of Oregon’s first release in 2009 and it is immune to EFB. The pollinators of Theta ( Polly O I believe, Washington and ETA are all resistant too. Here is a link to many varieties resistant on edible landscaping. One Green World has a list but it is not all right on 1 page Edible Landscaping Plant Sale: Buy plants online from our garden center and plant nursery