Gardens with a 12,000-person waiting list
bbc.com
bbc.com
Now I can spend almost an entire day tying up tomatoes, planting seeds, creating wells in the dirt so water doesn't run off, doing anything that will help more vegetables grow. There is something extremely healing that comes with tending to nature. I would bet every human has the innate ability to do it.
We are mostly very disconnected from nature. Once you get back to it, you realize how healing it is for your mind and body. Now, I literally NEED these days in the backyard. After one of these days, I am more at peace.
I know not everyone has the space. You can also grow a lot of things in containers. People throw away all sorts of pots every year that they get from nurseries. I have picked up hundreds off the side of the road (in the US).
Also, as an engineer, you realize that your computer is not very amazing compared to nature. You're in awe at the ability of plants to respond to different situations and simply witnessing their growth provides the contrast that you need to put your computer and the technologies around you into perspective.
And maybe we ought to encourage more people to stop playing video games and get out and grow more stuff.
You can already do this in video games though (Harvest Moon, Stardew Valley, Farming Simulator, etc.)
How does that possibly translate to a video game?
And that seems like the most active part of that game. Maybe if the physics were wonky that would be funny, at least. But this is one that I can't wrap my mind around.
I think it's fair to say that in order to be enjoyable, most games don't try give a realistic representation of the entire experience.
I don’t blame as much the kids, the way of life in an industrial country is all about wasting time and not helping kids learn and enjoy life. We as parents have failed to transfer our experiences because we are to damn busy trying to keep up with everything it’s going on around us, and in many cases a mobile device is enough to shut a kid up. Yes, we live in a sad world that we don’t know anymore what will happen if one day markets are no longer an option.
Some parents are bad parents. Some people on simple 3rd world farms abuse their children. Some people in developed metropolises focus on teaching their children to learn and enjoy life. The world is changing, and it's generally a mixed bag. You want to call it sad and depressing, that's fine, do you. I don't see it so cynically.
As the saying goes: You take the good, you take the bad, and then you have...the facts of life.
However, your open perspective does not necessarily counter the original comment.
from the original comment: "Yes, we live in a sad world that we don’t know anymore what will happen if one day markets are no longer an option."
If you remove the word sad, would you refute that statement? Yes, there are good and bad things about industrialization. For example, more time for children for things like education. But there are also many terrible things.
That's not to say you can't learn those things even if you live in a modern society, but it takes some effort.
Still don't agree with it in any real way. "We live in a world we don't know anymore" is the story of human history. Change is the only constant and all that (yea yea, "industrial revolution", "everything is happening so fast", yadda yadda.)
IDK what "What will happen if one day markets are no longer an option" is supposed to mean? Like, global collapse and we can't buy things at the store? Then it's a global collapse and everything is fucked. The situations that would lead to me needing to know how to make my own tools and farm my own land and fight off gangs of raiders coming for my water and women aren't worth worrying about. You can't plan for "the whole of society as you know it collapses" without knowing specifically what would be replacing your society.
Dude was trying to say that he feels his unique experience is good and his values are good and he sees a society that doesn't respect those skills and values. I believe that is his view. I don't share it. These two things can both exist simultaneously because they're just opinions.
My kids aren’t raised on a farm, but we take frequent trips to local farms so they can see how they operate, touch and interact with animals (help milk a cow and feed livestock, for example).
As soon as they’re a bit older, they’ll learn to weld, tend a garden, change a flat tire, perform CPR, body weight exercises, as well as survival skills. Fortune favors the prepared. And I’ll admit, I’m going to be filled with pride the first time my daughter successfully strikes an arc stick welding and fixes something on the spot.
...until one day they'll learn to say "No Mom/Dad, I'm not interested." I'm not being cynical: children have their own minds and it's a really important growing step to find their own interest at some age.
Well, if your kids are like you, they may have a slightly better chance of liking changing a flat tire than my kids, but don't expect it as a given, and don't be alarmed if they decide shooting a minecraft Youtube video is a better use of their time.
I once took a computer build/repair class in college. I learned a couple neat things but it was overall a waste of time. Not a week after that class was over did my friend who took the same class ask me to build his computer. If you don't live it, you probably won't be it. If you've never done anything, you probably won't be able to do anything.
This doesn't seem to follow from the sentences that proceeded it. The remedy to inattentive parenting is doomsday prepping?
Gardening and other "fundamental" activities can be great ways for parents to spend meaningful time with their children, but the goal isn't to prepare our children for the impending collapse of civilization, right?
(1) Plastics and pesticides. They are over-used by gardeners as opposed to commercial farmers. Even without chemicals, the plastics pots, bags and other devices all end up in landfills. Those innocuous black pots cannot be properly recycled due to their colour and gardeners seem unwilling to shift to more sustainable options, even more sustainable colours of pots that could be more easily recycled.
(2) Peat. Until yesterday I was unaware of the carnage being done to peat bogs. The BBC's Tonight program just showed me footage of the open-pit peat mines that are literally strip-mining peat bogs to feed Britain's gardening hobby. The environmental and climate damage done by destroying peat bogs, giant CO2 sinks, is immense.
Footage of an Estonian peat mine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXr0z3h1Cig
(3) Water. Home gardens and allotments get their water from municipal sources. Municipal water is far more expensive than the water used on farms, and municipal sources lack the capacity to provide the acer-feet necessary to grow substantial amounts of food. That means allotments, urban farming, is an unsustainable food source. The carrot bought at costco was grown using river/lake water. The carrot grown behind someone's house used municipal water, and probably far more of it. The costco carrot is the more sustainable option.
So I've changed my mind about gardening. It is not an environmental net positive. It might be great for the health of the people doing it, but it isn't helping the climate. It isn't as bad as drag racing but is far worse than hiking. It is an environmentally costly hobby that should be approached with caution.
I'm not a farmer but this description of farming from the end of last century stuck in my mind.
https://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/25/magazine/playing-god-in-t...
"I asked him to walk me through a season's regimen. It typically begins early in the spring with a soil fumigant; to control nematodes, many potato farmers douse their fields with a chemical toxic enough to kill every trace of microbial life in the soil. Then, at planting, a systemic insecticide (like Thimet) is applied to the soil; this will be absorbed by the young seedlings and, for several weeks, will kill any insect that eats their leaves. After planting, Forsyth puts down an herbicide -- Sencor or Eptam -- to ''clean'' his field of all weeds. When the potato seedlings are six inches tall, an herbicide may be sprayed a second time to control weeds.
Idaho farmers like Forsyth farm in vast circles defined by the rotation of a pivot irrigation system, typically 135 acres to a circle; I'd seen them from 30,000 feet flying in, a grid of verdant green coins pressed into a desert of scrubby brown. Pesticides and fertilizers are simply added to the irrigation system, which on Forsyth's farm draws most of its water from the nearby Snake River. Along with their water, Forsyth's potatoes may receive 10 applications of chemical fertilizer during the growing season. Just before the rows close -- when the leaves of one row of plants meet those of the next -- he begins spraying Bravo, a fungicide, to control late blight, one of the biggest threats to the potato crop. (Late blight, which caused the Irish potato famine, is an airborne fungus that turns stored potatoes into rotting mush.) Blight is such a serious problem that the E.P.A. currently allows farmers to spray powerful fungicides that haven't passed the usual approval process. Forsyth's potatoes will receive eight applications of fungicide.
Twice each summer, Forsyth hires a crop duster to spray for aphids. Aphids are harmless in themselves, but they transmit the leafroll virus, which in Russet Burbank potatoes causes net necrosis, a brown spotting that will cause a processor to reject a whole crop. It happened to Forsyth last year. ''I lost 80,000 bags'' -- they're a hundred pounds each -- ''to net necrosis,'' he said. ''Instead of getting $4.95 a bag, I had to take $2 a bag from the dehydrator, and I was lucky to get that.'' Net necrosis is a purely cosmetic defect; yet because big buyers like McDonald's believe (with good reason) that we don't like to see brown spots in our fries, farmers like Danny Forsyth must spray their fields with some of the most toxic chemicals in use, including an organophosphate called Monitor.
''Monitor is a deadly chemical,'' Forsyth said. ''I won't go into a field for four or five days after it's been sprayed -- even to fix a broken pivot.'' That is, he would sooner lose a whole circle to drought than expose himself or an employee to Monitor, which has been found to cause neurological damage.
Wonder if I ought to put my name down for one in case Brexit really goes bad, unfortunately I didn't inherit his poachers shotgun (just as well as it is highly naughty in terms of uk firearms laws :-)
1: use of pesticides is uncommon amongst most veg gardeners, even mainstream garden magazines and culture now cover the harm of plastic use in pots etc. Note also is relatively simple to drastically cut plastic use in veg gardening by growing from seed and avoiding plastic plug trays.
2: again people are very conscious of peat use, indeed many nations have incoming bans.
3: one of the first things most allotment gardeners do is get a water butt set up to collect rainwater. Most allotments don’t allow hosepipes so if nothing else it saves lugging water back from the nearest tap. Similarly it’s easy to get water storage setup in any garden, it’s one of the first “hardware” projects on most hobbyist gardeners agenda.
1. Not everyone uses those pots, and there are lots of alternatives. Many serious gardeners start from seed. Also, you provide no actual analysis of how much waste these contribute relative to vegetable farms + shipping + supermarkets, which also involves a lot of plastic.
2. Peat is terrible, and also totally unnecessary. What's needed here is regulation.
3. Expensive, perhaps. Claiming that farms use surface water is simply untrue. Try flying over the American west some time: those little circles are often the result of depleting ground water and pumping it onto the arid ground. Both gardens and farms can be far more water efficient than they currently are (personally I use salvaged mulch and drip irrigation), but farming is currently crazily unsustainable water-wise, both in terms of consumption and contamination.
It is definitely, definitely possible to garden in an environmentally positive way. Almost everything used can be reused or obtained from other sources (single use food plastic is great for seed starting), pests can be managed at a small scale without pesticides, and efficient water practices are easy. It's also easier to incorporate efficient perrenial crops at a small scale.
Also, there are second order effects to be considered in connecting people to their food systems. Nobody notices if the far away farm providing their veggies is operating responsibly, but growing their own or getting involved with urban growers lets them see the process up close and be connected to it.
(More on 1) - we do use Jiffy planters for some things, which we then rinse after transplanting and reuse the next season. However, we mostly sow directly outside.)
There are a few things missing from this comparison, though!
First and foremost: impact of shipping. Once you ship zucchinis from Mexico to your local grocer / supermarket, there's a lot more embodied carbon than in a zucchini you pulled from your front step.
Second: mechanization. AFAIK, most home gardening is a pretty manual process. Not so for industrial-scale farming, which involves tractors and tillers and spraying planes and giant irrigators and so on. While there is a bit of "amortization at scale", those all add to the total lifecycle resources necessary to grow something. (Not to mention that all that equipment has to be built somewhere from materials extracted somewhere else, and the ongoing maintenance cost / burden of this equipment is decidedly higher than for our push mower or pruning shears.)
Finally: land use. Most farmland was (either recently or historically) cleared from forests, which are also giant CO2 sinks. The most prominent example today is probably heavy deforestation in the Amazon, mostly for agricultural and meat production. Now, of course our home garden sits on previously cleared land, but we're not clearing any more of it - in fact, we have trees, bushes, ground cover, etc. in parts of our garden space, meaning that we're taking what was underutilized urban land and converting it to a CO2 sink.
I'd love to see a scientific lifecycle analysis of gardening vs. agriculture, along with guidelines for "environmentally responsible gardening" - but I'd be very surprised if the analysis didn't come out heavily in favour of local small-scale gardening.
It's gardening. It's fine. If gardening (gardening!) is now something that should be "approached with caution" then we've jumped the shark as a civilization.
I eat 3 to 4 meals a week that largely feature produce from my garden for 8 months of the year.
This can be replicated without exasserbating any of the valid issues you noted.
Industrial agriculture is a scourge.
Grow your own food yall.
All I do is water it when Nature doesn't provide enough, and weed it once a week for 30-35 minutes.
A little bit of corn, lettuce, peas, beans and onions to the left of the corn that you cannot see.
For just myself, this little bit of work keeps me with fresh lettuce all summer and not to mention beans/peas out of the garden are delicious!
I get where you are coming from regarding the factory/industrial farms who are more motivated with profits, however for the enthusiast or smaller mom and pop farms, there is nothing wrong with gardening and if anything should be encouraged so people are more able to be self reliant and break free from having to rely on the industrial farms.
Peat has been largely replaced with free compost from the local recycling centre.
Clearly lots of small scale production, even if well planned, is less efficient than well planned industrial production, but a lot of the work in the allotments case is human labour rather than CO2 producing machinery.
Note there is much less waste.
I was struck recently by a story on the BBC where they interviewed somebody living 'off-grid' in Finland. He told the story of how he occasionally get's vegetables that are discarded from a supermarket. His friend brought him some tomato's produced in Africa, packaged in France, sold on in the supplier chain - all the way to Finland where they were to be thrown away!!!
Obviously it's very hard to know how sustainable anything is given the complexity of supply - if only we had all the externalities ( environmental damage ) of production in the price ( energy properly priced ). The cost of disposal, or replacement of a resource factored in.
That kind of stuff requires government action, as free markets reward the exploitation of externalities.
It's conceivable that the market could price in externalities too, possibly with government oversight.
1) I don’t use pesticides. I don’t grow veg such as cauliflower that are prone to insect attack. The only plastic pots are those used by the garden centre when they sell plants. Every few years I use moss-killer on the lawn, but I manually weed my borders and growing areas rather than spray herbicide.
2) I have never use peat, and neither do my gardening neighbours.
3) My garden gets its water from the rain. If it doesn’t rain, my grass scorches and I reseed. I do water my tomatoes at the height of the summer. I mix grass cuttings with the autumn leaf fall to create seed-free mulch that helps moisture retention.
My garden contains numerous plants that are attractive to pollinators, and I have a large population of birds that forage in it (I counted 14 distinct species in the last RSPB bird count exercise). There are bats in the summer and sometimes hedgehogs and stag beetles. I have a small number of wood piles that I leave undisturbed for whatever chooses to live in them.
I'm getting the translation of philistine, which seems a bit harsh?
Anything that better captures the flavour, for an Anglophone?
You could also call them submissive, hypocrite squareheaded cowards.
The "Spieß" seems to translate to "skewer", "spit", "pike". So, they sting, but are not very sharp. They always side with the authority du jour, because that keeps them safe.
"In general, the residents of Göttingen are divided into students, professors, philistines, and beasts... The number of philistines of Göttingen is rather large, like sand, or more precisely, like shit by the seashore; truly, when I saw them in the morning, with their dirty faces and white invoices, before the gates of the academic court, I could barely believe how God could create so much scum."
The modern use of the word, referring to somebody who is petty, obedient to any authority, bland and unpleasant, was probably shaped by Ödön von Horvath's novel "Der ewige Spießer" (The Eternal Philistine). The pejorative was popular among German students in the wake of the anti-fascist protests of 1968, referring to those set in their (Nazi) ways due to lack of critical thinking.
Note: Most of this comment is just me summarizing the German Wikipedia article on the word. I am not a philologist.
I assumed, the "spearmen" background, however, I find the analogy to be, probably by accident, to have a much wider reach, which I can not really communicate in English, since the vocabulary differs too much for that.
Thanks for the interesting comment.
It's really really hard to translate stereotypes from one country to another. There are a lot of US stereotypes that you can't translate to Germany either.
I manage a community garden in Montreal and love the idea of BBQ and beers in the evening, but the city, (who owns the land), is not ok with drinking at the garden, (or cooking, in general).
If you want a translation (to convince Montreal to adopt similar laws?) you'll need to find someone to translate it for you.
If that page is the whole set of laws then it's really not so many rules as the article makes out - our rules in Montreal are probably just as long. I'm going to see if I can cherry-pick the best parts for my little corner of Montreal.
I Google Translated the federal law, and it seems to be mostly about how leases are dealt with. I also did some Googling and found what I think is the garden in the article, although there seems to be a few gardens in Wedding. They're big compared to what we have here in Montreal.
I doubt you find much about alcohol consumption in this law since in Germany you are allowed to drink in public at 16 years old (14 with your parents)
For many this is not a feasible way either, as there are 12 000 people in line before them.
I'm also not sure where they're getting the 12,000 from, since to my knowledge every "colony" manages their own waiting lists. If they're just adding the number of people on each list to arrive at the total, they're double-counting people who're not looking for a garden in a particular location and appear on multiple lists.
All in all, if you really want a garden, it's absolutely feasible with a few years of waiting. And if you just want to dream about having one, you can still put your name on the waiting list and politely decline each lot they offer.
EDIT: there's also a sharing platform for people who need help gardening and those who want to do it: https://www.datschlandia.de/ That is another way to get the benefits of a garden bypassing the waiting lists.
I’m pretty sure you can buy land in rural areas for pennies.
People are willing to live with far too little space compared to what a person actually needs to live well. I think it is a zoning issue where local governments need to force more working green space and workspace in general.
Living in small apartments without space to garden or build or maintain things makes people somewhat miserable consumer drones.
I asked some coworkers and got mixed responses. Some said it was a bit like Berlin's version of a backyard (because in the city core, most people live in flats with no backyard). Some said it was a place to go for the weekend, something like a lake cabin or cottage in North America.
There's almost no information about them online, that I could find. If you're curious to explore some in Google Maps, here are some quick links:
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/money/2009/jun/02/allotments-sho...
[1] https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/allotments_and_waitin...
https://www.belmont-ma.gov/conservation-commission/pages/vic...
The rules are interesting to read: https://www.belmont-ma.gov/sites/belmontma/files/uploads/han...
Obviously consequence of density. Densified people desperately want something backyard-like, even if it's kilometers from their residence.
But over here its also shifting from old retirees to young people, at the moment its qquite a good mix.