It's funny because I learned about the regenerative farming and no-dig approach from Hacker News out of all places. A couple years ago there was a thread about soil quality and someone mentioned Richard Perkins, who runs a regenerative agriculture farm in Sweden. He also had a Youtube channel which I checked out. Then I found out about Charles Dowding from Britain who popularizes no-dig approach (don't use a spade or a fork to turn the soil, but plant directly in a thick layer of compost), also on a Youtube channel. Down the rabbit hole here we go.

I was sceptical at first - it sounds too good to be true and runs against the conventional wisdom I followed. But I started experimenting with a few vegetable patches and I was happy with the results. Then I expanded over time, still amazed with the outcomes.

It's more of a hobby operation, so I'm not worried about optimizing yields. To me the biggest factor is that gardening became super enjoyable. I guess it's because efforts-to-results ratio got so much better. I got many compliments from strangers about my garden (including incredibly oversized pumpkins), which made me proud.

Not sure how it fits into a hacker's ethos, but there you have it.

You’d genuinely be shocked how many hardcore tech folks own and run hobby or semi-commercial farms.

I run a biodiverse fruit orchard.

I'm a software engineer, but my wife runs a regenerative flower farm. So I'm exposed to both worlds