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Comment by bserge | Hacker News Reader

I took it beyond sprouting and grew full fledged plants out of fresh tomato seeds, fresh bellpepper seeds, dried beans, onions, garlic, dried chickpeas and dried green peas.

They all grew and produced their own vegetables.

Rice and avocado failed, but I didn't pay any special attention to their needs.

Tomatoes, onions and garlic grow under cheap LEDs, too. The latter two probably grow in the dark tbh, very resilient.

Plants are amazing.

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I had a giant summer squash vine growing out of my compost pile, and I let it go. Within about a month, it was not only producing summer squash but also producing pumpkin-like gourds (some yellow and green, and some white), a few of which grew to gigantic sizes. A gardening friend told me that this is because of hybridization and that the plant can exhibit characteristics of multiple parent plants. It's possible that the parent plant had been crossed with a pumpkin/gourd type plant to take advantage of some of its innate characteristics (disease resistance, etc).

If the weird offspring are really bitter, stop eating them!

You probably won’t die but you’ll be quite miserable. Apparently, once a gourd starts not breeding true, it can revert to a form with way too much bitterness - we humans have trouble with the chemical and get quite sick.

https://www.anses.fr/en/content/beware-inedible-gourds

Yeah, I didn't eat any of the weird offspring. We did eat the summer squash it produced, and they were delicious.

Whenever I open a fruit (or other seed pod) and find its seeds have already began sprouting inside the fruit, I plant them on my windowsill. It makes me feel like these particular seeds really really wanna grow and I owe them the chance.

So far, so good.

I do this with onions that have started to sprout, planting them in window boxes. Onion flowers are very pretty, and you can eat the stems that sprout. As it's a window box they never over-winter, but it's good for a season :-)

I've been told that this is just a plant adaptation where some sprout now, some in a little bit, some a little after that, etc - and humans have selected for the immediacy of germination in many crop plants.

My SO tries to grow avocados using stones collected from store-bought fruit.

If they don't achieve a critical mass of leaves, they eventually wither and die.

Their temperature, insolation and humidity requirements appear to be very narrow.

I had some success putting the plant right next to a humidifier - the only leaves not to dry out were the ones covered by the mist.

Avocado doesn't breed true, the seeds will almost certainly lead to a tree that produces inedible fruit. If you just want the tree, that's fine, but I wanted to warn you in case you're setting yourself up for major disappointment after 5 years of looking after a tree and expecting a reward ;-)

Just the tree - my sister is an agricultural engineer and removed any dreams of delicious home-grown avocados from my head early on. :D

I've had an indoor avocado for about 6 years now, at about 6' tall. I chopped the first leaves and waited until new ones took hold. It seems to put up with a lot of abuse. I've had it completely dry out once and lose all its leaves only to bounce back even stronger. I water it quite often but gave up on trying to humidify it after hard water left dust on the leaves.

This season I have tried the very first time to plant some chilis, grasses, and tomatoes on my balkony.

It's amazing how gardening works. It's basically area times water times sunshine. Only stressful moments are cold nights and spontaneous storms.

I wonder how many resources an average consumer needs to get enough harvest for a full year of sustainable consumption? A lot of land and water seems to be necessary.

Land, water, *and time*. Also, soil quality and sunlight matter. Finally, animal control. Rabbits and groundhogs can eat a lot and before you know it...you're not eating at all :)

I've read a few hundred m2 to a few hectares of land are needed per person to be self-sufficient. I guess it depends on what you are growing, your climate, and what you plan to do outside the growing season.

I have a friend with a couple of basic hoop greenhouses (around 8x2m) and for 6 weeks in summer they have more than enough tomatoes and cucumbers to provide for themselves to eat, to preserve and to give away to friends.

I think with a little planning, and only eating whatever is in season that week, you could easily grow enough in a 100m2 garden to provide all the vegetable needs for a family during summer. Planning is the important bit though, as some crops like broccoli need to be planted the year before. Oh and it's gonna be a hell of a lot tastier than what you get in the supermarket.

Closer to few hectares if you want to be self-sufficient.

Our greenhouse is 60m2 + vegetable garden around 200m2 + few dozen apple trees and some other fruit trees. The season is not very long here (NE Europe), so we basically start to harvest lettuce, radish and spring onions some time end of May and from that moment on we basically switch to "home grown" diet if you wish which lasts into late October or so.

The part about tomatoes and cucumbers is very true. Once they start to bear fruit, you need to have your preservation or distribution plan ready or they will be wasted.

That said, we have to visit supermarket weekly anyway...

Here is a farmer talking about how you can't just produce an Avacado plant from the seed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWAR_DotvZs

Well, you can produce a plant, but you cannot produce a "Haas" avocado plant from the seed of "Haas" avocado fruit. Each seed has its own unique variety, and few of them taste good.

Plants are amazing!

> cheap LEDs

Which ones did you use?

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