Your 2024 Garden

[fuzzi]

I had my new seeds in a zip bag stored in an open tote, and my dog decided they were food. Fortunately I caught her before she did more damage than chew through the bag and into a seed packet. So, I organized my seeds and put them in a plastic tote with a locking lid.

Debbie approved?

Those are all glass jars with metal screw-on lids.

 

[fuzzi]

This was a "Huh?" moment for me:

https://news.yahoo.com/carbon-footprint-homegrown-food-five-200247599.html

Vegetable gardening is bad for the climate, grow flowers instead???

 

[tripletfeb]

This was a "Huh?" moment for me:

https://news.yahoo.com/carbon-footprint-homegrown-food-five-200247599.html

Vegetable gardening is bad for the climate, grow flowers instead???

Saw this the other day. Now they want to come for our gardens. Well, I will be doubling my garden size, thank you very much

 

[tripletfeb]

I am getting ridiculously excited to do my garden. I can't wait to see if my pepper plants from last year over wintered successfully. And if my seeds I saved will germinate. I bought all heirloom seeds this year and hope to save some of those seeds for next year too

 

[saysfaa]

This was a "Huh?" moment for me:

https://news.yahoo.com/carbon-footprint-homegrown-food-five-200247599.html

Vegetable gardening is bad for the climate, grow flowers instead???

Published in "Nature Cities." Volume 1, Issue 1: January 2024. Great advertising/marketing, huh?

Yes, it says to grow 90% flowers instead of vegetables in order to outperform conventional ag.

Because gardens are more climate friendly than conventional ag unless you count the "carbon cost" of sheds, paths, and raised beds which they figure are built mostly of new materials divided by the lifetime of the garden - which they figure is five years. And count the carbon costs of landfill and incineration for those materials at their end of life.

But that don't count if they are used for flowers.

"...
This study takes a conservative approach by allocating all supplies and irrigation to food production, and infrastructure is allocated to food and social co-benefits based on interviews with farmers and standardized calculations (for example, 10% of a raised bed allocated to non-food if 10% of the area grows ornamentals).

Assuming farms adopt climate-friendly practices for their supplies, what percentage of infrastructure must be dedicated to non-food outputs to produce food with lower carbon intensity than conventional agriculture? Sensitivity analysis showed that most of our urban farms and individual gardens outperform conventional agriculture when more than 90% of infrastructure impacts are allocated to non-food services (Supplementary Fig. 3)...."

It looks like torturing the data to get a desired headline.

The solution is to either (or both) build sheds, paths, and raised beds with mostly scrap materials and/or use them for more than five years and/or reuse or recycle them after you are done.

 

[fuzzi]

Published in "Nature Cities." Volume 1, Issue 1: January 2024. Great advertising/marketing, huh?

Yes, it says to grow 90% flowers instead of vegetables in order to outperform conventional ag.

Because gardens are more climate friendly than conventional ag unless you count the "carbon cost" of sheds, paths, and raised beds which they figure are built mostly of new materials divided by the lifetime of the garden - which they figure is five years. And count the carbon costs of landfill and incineration for those materials at their end of life.

But that don't count if they are used for flowers.

"...
This study takes a conservative approach by allocating all supplies and irrigation to food production, and infrastructure is allocated to food and social co-benefits based on interviews with farmers and standardized calculations (for example, 10% of a raised bed allocated to non-food if 10% of the area grows ornamentals).

Assuming farms adopt climate-friendly practices for their supplies, what percentage of infrastructure must be dedicated to non-food outputs to produce food with lower carbon intensity than conventional agriculture? Sensitivity analysis showed that most of our urban farms and individual gardens outperform conventional agriculture when more than 90% of infrastructure impacts are allocated to non-food services (Supplementary Fig. 3)...."

It looks like torturing the data to get a desired headline.

The solution is to either (or both) build sheds, paths, and raised beds with mostly scrap materials and/or use them for more than five years and/or reuse or recycle them after you are done.

Or just ignore what the "experts" say and grow vegetables anyway.

 

[Sally PB]

And since vegetable plants produce some kind of flower for reproduction, I am planting flowers, dang it!

 

[Iluveggers]

Saw this the other day. Now they want to come for our gardens. Well, I will be doubling my garden size, thank you very much

We are adding a few herb boxes, and I think DH found another spot we can fence in for corn and winter squash. Hoping it isn’t too shady, right next to our woods. I am also working on him to see if we can make a few 3x3 boxes with some decent pallets we acquired.

If he builds it, I will fill it.

 

[Iluveggers]

And since vegetable plants produce some kind of flower for reproduction, I am planting flowers, dang it!

I inter plant nasturtiums, petunias, and marigolds in my beds, and sunflowers and zinnias on the north side of the garden. Might also try planting sunflowers on the north side of my property next to the fenceline, along with some other wildflower seeds I found. Ground is grassy, low and gets saturated, any ideas on filling the area without buying dirt?

 

[Sally PB]

Ground is grassy, low and gets saturated, any ideas on filling the area without buying dirt?

Is it a drainage problem, or just that the area is lower? Can you cut some ditches to let the water drain out?

Or.... if you have any dirt you need to dig out of somewhere else, you could dump it in the low areas to try to bring it up.

I have my "big dirt project" that I've been working on for several seasons now. Any time I dig up any dirt that isn't prime garden dirt, I dump it alongside my green house.

Early days in the project.

The dirt is up to the top of the black now. I can't tell you how many carts of dirt I've hauled up the hill... hundreds, by now.