no, food costs that much

exactly.

i’ve been gardening for years. it’s a supplement. for like 1-2months i get nice produce that can feed a few people for a few weeks. but that’s it. i maybe produce 20lbs of produce in a year if i’m lucky. that’s over a dozen or two plants. i have a good sized garden of about 100 sq ft.

not to mention the weather any year could totally f you. one year we had three months of drought, so i got like 2lbs of tomatoes that year.

turns out i still buy like 95% of my produce from the grocery store… because it’s available year round and it’s hard to grow variety well unless you have multiple beds with differing soil and sun conditions.

most folks grow tomoatoes and cukes because they are easy and produce abundantly. but i am not going to live on tomatoes and cukes 365 days a year.

the space needed to grow squashes, berries, etc. is way way higher. you need a lot of land. and they are very low yield. a ten foot watermelon vine produces like maybe 1-2 melons per year and takes up 20 sq ft of garden space. a squash vine might produce 4-6 decent squash, etc. and a lot of veggies and plants are non complimentary, meaning they choke each other out if grown in proximity.

the only person i know who has a varied and big garden is an engineer who has spend five figures producing dozens of beds, water systems, and etc. and he still gets a shitty yield some years due to weather and he struggles constantly with rabbits, groundhogs stealing his crop. he has a whole trap and kill system for them even now. because the critters know he is the place to go for the tasty plants. most home gardening grow a few tomato plants and make some tomato sauce and throw a dinner party and that’s the extent of their home gardening.

it’s way more complex and difficult than some ‘hrr drr just bring back victory gardens’ nonsense. you’re average person isn’t going to be building a 1000sq ft veggie garden with fencing and dealing with all the part time job of labor and upkeep that it requires.

Do you fertilizer your garden with your own shit?

Right?

it’s no different than the yahoos who they they would run the govt better. then they try and give up because it’s ‘too hard’. this is basically the same as soveign citizen BS, but with vegetables instead of guns.

but we can’t let a complex reality get in the way of our well-intention delusions of smugness. because apparently if every citizen isn’t providing themselve wiht their own fruits and vegetables… it’s their complicity with corporations… or something.

and who will till the soil, weed, fight pests, harvest, etc.

govt going to provide the physical labor and extra hours per week that is required too?

I mean I get it. I’m a rich white person with a lot of leisure time and I own property where I can have a garden… but turns out not everyone has this stuff. Half my younger friends have no time and no property on which to garden. And those folks are much better off that say, a single mom of two who rents and is struggling to provide her kids with food because she’s working 50 hours a week to pay rent. Should I just tell her to ‘make your own garden! that will totally feed your family of three…’ just put dozens of hours into your concrete driveway of plastic tubs that will provide you with a few weeks of vegetables, most of which will rot before you can use them… unless you want to devote more time and money into canning.

Gardening is great. But jerking myself off and generalizing and saying everyone else should be doing what i have the luxury to do… just makes me a smug self-righteous ass. People buy food from stores because it’s convenient and fast.

You are missing the point.

It’s not about your shop. It’s about everyone making their own furniture… which doesn’t scale and isn’t feasible.

home gardening requires time and land.

It’s largely a privilege for those who have both. not a solution for the economically depressed who have neither.

you made extra and left it in the pan for later

when i cook bacon i do the whole back and only eat a few slices and save the rest.

excellent advice, if you never leave your home.

yeah i was in grad school 10 years ago. I made about $1000/mo, and my rent was about 900. After food and other necessities, I was losing about 300-400 a month.

If i was in school today, I’m confident I’d be making 1200/mo and my rent would be about $2000.

also why the bulk of those students in those subjects come almost exclusively from wealthy families…