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New life hack
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 13 May 2024
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Gardening is cool and absolutely can decrease your spending, but I want to take a moment to talk about how the efficiency of a home garden will never match industrial farming and that the cost effectiveness of fertilizers required to grow all of your own food would negate the savings unless you've got your own ammonia mine and recycle all of your poop.
So the last part I’m way ahead, it’s all stored in several tanks in my backyard.
I love talking about this stuff so I was wondering if you plan to treat the urine with sodium to make urea as a nitrate fertilizers and if so what sodium source are you using?
Urine? Ugh dude, gross!! I’m only storing the poop of course
But theres SO MUCH nitrogen in Urine.
There’s also nitrogen in the sun, but you wont see me store the sun together with my precious poop ever, boss
Compost is a home project (and available in some cities as part of the waste management system) and nutritious for plants; but most of the things I grow as food I don't fertilize much or any. The fruit trees once a year or so, the garden soil sometimes in between planting or when growing watermelon or squash, bigger things do need some extra fertilizer (and tomatoes like some) but most seem to do fine with good soil and crop rotation/companion planting. Farmers have to use more because they've depleted the soil with monoculture. I still don't think it's cost effective when time is factored in, but it's better fresher food and not as fussy as farming.
Genius, you just keep putting back less than you take and it lasts forever~! How come nobody thought of that? Snark put aside for a moment, I think composting on a large scale should be done, even in urban environments, but it won't impact the statement I made even a single bit.
Dunno what to tell you - different plants put different things into and out of the soil, we cut the grass in the yard, and the bushes and things, all sorts of stuff can go into the pile that becomes nutrients and of course plants eat sunshine, not just soil nutrients. It's been working a few years and the soil keeps improving.
Farming is a whole different thing and more reliant on fertilizer.
Industrial farming, as commonly practiced, is unsustainable. We basically just turn fossil fuels into food, and degrade our environment (including our food production capacity) while doing it.
Vegetable gardening can definitely save you money, including negations. Most people, including myself, just do it as a hobby though.
I started vegetable gardening last year, and all my inputs, so far, have been free (with the exception of seeds, seed starting soil, and various inexpensive tools). I've used chicken manure from Craigslist (had to shovel it myself), home made compost (grass/weed clippings, arborist wood chips, kitchen scraps), and sometimes urine for extra nitrogen (lol). I've noticed that with adding compost on top of my soil, I don't really need much, if any, fertilizer (manure or urine).
Nitrogen-fixing plants can also be used to bring more nitrogen into your little garden ecosystem.
I haven't used any pesticides or herbicides. I just hand pull any weeds when I see them and mulch with either wood chips or paper with compost on top. I hand-pick caterpillars when I see them (or hunt for them when I see a lot of damage), and just throw them into my lawn (they don't seem to be able to make it back).
I'm still learning and experimenting, and have had certain species decimated by pests (brassicas), but I think I can experiment with timing, varieties, and hope natural predators will move in (I started planting plants in my perrenial beds that are supposed to attract beneficial insects, and put a birdhouse near my garden). If I find I can't grow certain crops or varieties well in my environment, I just won't. I save the seeds from my healthiest plants, so hopefully, this will eventually select for varieties that do well in my particular conditions.
No matter how you slice it, surviving completely off of home gardening would not be any more sustainable than industrial agriculture. Just more costly.
Efficiency in produce per monetary cost. But for efficiency of human health per natural resources, I think gardening might be a winner.
I think you're abstracting too much to try and make your point. What on earth does "efficiency of human health per natural resources" mean in comparison to "efficiency in produce per monetary cost". I think youre just lost in a little too much sauce when trying to justify your view.
I mean, say you have a certain amount of natural resources (land, chemicals, organisms) and you want to maximise health; or you have a certain standard of health and want to minimise resources used.
To put it another way, I think if across the whole of society we had more small-scale gardening that would be a benefit to human health and the environment compared to exclusively using large scale farming.
Conversely, if the goal is maximum financial profit, or absolute quantity of produce, it is more 'efficient' - i.e. more quantity of your goal for less quantity of your cost - to do large scale farming.
It was already well established that only the wealthy can afford a consistently healthy lifestyle, but thanks for chiming in.
Sounds pretty defeatist to me.
Defeatist is accepting a system that harms the poor. Separating yourself from the system is unrealistic for the vast majority and doesn't fix it.
That seems to be what you're doing. "Only the wealthy can live healthy" and giving up on discussion to change that.
I see solutions to make Industrial Agriculture work to help all people: land redistribution, regulation, subsidization of what is actually needed. I see no way to make gardens at home work for every person, it's a complete nonstarter.
You're the defeatist, here. You're fleeing from the problems.
*proposes way to help*
"Noo! You're fleeing from the problems"
Good. You go ahead and work on you proposals to improve industrial agriculture. I might not think that's a complete solution, but it's not defeatist. Saying, "only the wealthy can eat healthy" and leaving it at that, sounded defeatist.
But I hope you can agree my support of more people doing home gardening - also not a complete solution - is a suggestion of how to improve things, not defeatist. You might disagree with its utility. You certainly disagree with it being a solution for everybody. But need you attack it as defeatist and running from problems?
Okay I've re-read back to your first comment and I think I see what you mean, now.
You mean, that you see gardening as something available only to the wealthy, so discussion of gardening helping with health is of no relevance/help to the question of how to improve the situation for the less wealthy, right?
I see your point. When I chimed in with gardening's 'efficiency', I wasn't trying to think of it as a solution for all people. That said, I do think some of the less industrial methods of farming are worth more effort. Maybe more people having gardens, rooftop aquaponics allotments. Small/local farming collectives. These things can help the balance be more in favour of getting the most health and human benefit, rather than the most money for shareholders and owners.