I agree it is about the long game. The challenge is getting people to see it as the long game. Like I mentioned I have about every edible plant that grows in my zone minus paw paw. They will stay in a smaller area until I plant them in the ground. Once they are in the ground they will all hit the ground running. I am doing this because I know it will be a few years to produce at least. My question goes back to how do we get the general public to plant a edible tree or bush. Like I said depending on the berry it may produce first year or second year. Trees or bushes that are fruit bearing may take 3-10 years to produce though. Nut trees may take upwards of 17 years to produce from seed or 15 years from transplant. To me who is 25 I know I have the time for that and it is easy to convince me to start those but to someone who is in their 50s a tree that will take 10 years to fruit like a pear or a apple on standard rootstock will bring them into their 60s and something that may take 15 years from transplant like a pecan will just about bring them into their 70s to see any production. That is why the older folk will be harder to convince for anything but annuals. Like I said in a place like Colorado where I live annuals are often a net less because of water costs. When I say net loss I am not counting my time is garden because to me that is silly that people do that. When I calculate costs I am calculating seeds, water costs and if needed any sprays. If we get lucky we get 10 squash and the seed costs us 3 dollars. The water is a lot of cost here. Once anyone starts annuals here that is a new gardener they will start to question costs of planting them. In other words it is either wait for the perennial to produce and get established which is a net loss every year but then start to get a net increase but many are not willing to do such or take a net loss every year with annuals where I live at least.
You are thinking about all the people that do not have a house already. Iām thinking about all the people that already do and have space.
Heck there is a ton of space that the different jurisdictions can convert into community gardens. All it takes is a bit of infrastructure (fencing, water, electric) and nonprofit community organizations happily take over the day-to-day operations.
Every single landfill should have a composting site with a knowledgeable individual and the infrastructure to produce high quality compost and mulch.
But you are 100% right in the fact that the way can be easy (a bag of seeds and a pot) but the will is not there.
A township in my area puts out a huge pile of leaf compost and wood chips every spring. Even at midsummer still lots left, as shown in pic.
Free for the taking.
Iāve reconditioned some of my poor hardpacked
soil with large amounts of this compost, along with some construction sand, or just use the compost as mulch.
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 donāt 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 donāt 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 donāt 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 canāt 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.
Iām currently reading a nice two volume set about it.
My city in Northern California gave us ātokenā ( too small) kitchen waste bins, and started collecting food waste along with our garden waste several months ago.
Iām 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 donāt 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.
thereās 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. thereās canners, orchardists, gardeners, farmers and ranchers on there showing what and how they do everything.
a lot of these sites online itās all about what you are interested in. you sign up and they show you crap, you have to hit ānot interestedā on it and search for āgardenā, āorchardā, etc and start looking at and watching that stuff. I donāt see videos less than 3 minutes on there very often, most of what Iām seeing is people explaining techniques, showing whatās growing in their zone, or art and historical videos (another interests Iāve 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 havenāt seen that. itās just modern culture pushing people to work more and harder and so theyāve no time for fun, theyāve got to pack all the fun into a really short window.
any rate newer social media is all about what you make of it, youāll find what you want to find.
@steveb4 every economic system has big death counts. slavery killed millions, thatās capitalism. thereās 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. ā¢ farmdoc daily. You have likely heard me bring up thats Itās been 100 years since Fritz Haber found a way to synthesize nitrogen The miracle of nitrogen - #13 by clarkinks
Follow the moneyā¦ now the corporations have a sayā¦ thanks Citizens United.
Michiganās 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 donāt have a pension any more, theyāre getting older, and they donāt want to keep selling useless stuff to rich people any more, or whatever they do. There are a lot of people in their 40ās to 60ās 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 Iām 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