Date: 2021-03-21 03:51 pm (UTC)
brin_bellway: forget-me-not flowers (Default)
From: [personal profile] brin_bellway
>>I feel like it's an entirely valid reaction to the modern environment to go "yay I don't need to master every task requires to keep my life together thank god"

Yeah, I think the *most* important thing I've learned from gardening is the importance of division of labour and economy of scale. Subsistence farming is *really* not a thing you ever want to have to do.

It's just scary that we *tried* to grow a victory garden this year and it almost completely flopped. It turned out to be more of a test run--the grocery stores have limped along well enough during the plague that one *could* live entirely off of them without *too* much trouble, especially since we had enough liquid funds and storage space to smooth out most of the boom-and-bust supply on our end--but it was a test we failed. As such, I've been thinking about how to make a more solid backup plan for the *next* time grocery stores go wonky (which could well be much wonkier than this, and possibly longer).

(Speaking of which, have I thanked you lately for introducing me to canned peaches? They're delicious and have an excellent shelf life and I am very pleased to have them in my dietary toolkit. I've been buying the big cans that are about three portions' worth and keeping leftovers in a Mason jar in the fridge.)

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>>you might have the climate for nut trees and "plant a bunch of herbs until one of them starts self-seeding in the plot" and tactics like that

Indeed I do: one area of my yard contains a whole bunch of feral oregano and two hazelnut trees. Unfortunately it turns out the hazelnut trees are incompatible with one another and *not* the breeding pair we supposedly bought, so we have never once gotten any hazelnuts out of them. We haven't done anything about it so far, but at some point we should probably add a third.

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>>I have no good solutions except, like, "net everything and hope your birds are stupid and lazy this year"

I'm thinking of putting a net on the mulberry tree and seeing if that helps.

I suspect hoping for *my* local birds to be stupid is more tenable than hoping for *parrots* to be stupid.

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>>I may also just throw up my hands and learn to enjoy whatever weeds are locally popular

We've been talking about that over in the Tumblr comments. I'm looking forward to trying dandelion flowers.

In my research I'm also hearing a lot of praise for amaranth. Next time I'm shopping at a store that sells plain amaranth seed (not made into pasta or anything) I'll buy some so I can try amaranth porridge and maybe pop-amaranth, and if I like it I might encourage some to settle my backyard.
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brin_bellway: forget-me-not flowers (Default)
Brin

May 2025

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