Ask HN: What is your farming experience, agri tools, etc.
Open ended. Size of farm, your involvement, tools technological help, brands, varieties, weather, greenhouse, etc. Not looking for any specific info.
~$200 amazon greenhouse (10'x20') 3 8' tables and some in-ground area
I have 8 4x8' beds in the front yard and a border bed around the lot. We've done the usual fruits and veggies (Tomatoes, Peppers, Squash, Eggplant, Beets, Radishes, Cukes) and some others (Artichoke, peas, beans, asparagus) but what we've really enjoyed and has done well in our climate / soil has been flowers and herbs for drying and for honey. There's a Thai pea flower that loves our weather, and makes a great tea. Chamomile and Coneflowers ( echinacea ) have also done well. Borage has been a real winner on both the honey and tea fronts. I don't think the Lemon trees are much for honey, but they go well with all the rest. So when the weather turns and folks are feeling bad, we have Honey-lemon-ginger concoctions made from all of our own produce, which is really special.
I keep bees in the back yard and on a friends' farm. I've got a longer term strategy to raise up nectar-bearing trees ( locusts, heather and heath, citrus, ) and the greenhouse has been good for that effort. I have water storage / thermal ballast in the greenhouse in the form of a 275Gal tote fed from a rain gutter, pumped to irrigation in the greenhouse, optionally controlled through HomeAssistant - Sonoff metering switches flashed with ESPHome.
Currently adding Govee temp/humidity sensors to my hives, gathering the BLE messages and pulling them in to HomeAssistant as well.
It isn't very well structured, but HA is mostly a cheap ( effort) dashboard that crosses a lot of functions ( PoE cameras and MQTT processing in one pane ) and has a lot of folks working on it already, so it's been pretty easy to map out the data and present it in a way that makes it easy to keep an eye on the greenhouse in the winter ( camera and temperature sensors and remotely trigger-able heater... ) without opening the door and letting out the heat that I might have.
How was asparagus growing experience? In India, it has some interest for Ayurveda medicine. But haven't come across first hand experience.
The plants useful for tea sounds good idea.
I’m not we’ll versed in Ayurveda, but we’re learning about herbs and traditional medicine. Ginger, St John’s Wort, echinacea and things like that are very interesting and healing.
I'm a hobbyist beekeeper (5 production hives).
I also have a garden and culture/grow mushrooms, but I don't sell these.