> growing food instead of lawns.
I've occasionally attempted to grow vegetables in my yard. They won't even sprout.
My apple tree is over 10 years old and still is little more than a stick with a few leaves.
I've occasionally attempted to grow vegetables in my yard. They won't even sprout.
My apple tree is over 10 years old and still is little more than a stick with a few leaves.
Self-sustainable living is an interest of mine, and one of my peeves is seeing folks on YouTube or Reddit posting tutorials on how to build a home hydroponic garden when it's clear that they have just finished building it. If you can keep it running for a couple of years, then that's when I would be interested in hearing more about it.
As far as fruit trees go, how they were planted has a lot to do with their success, as a poor root system will create a poor tree. Likewise, a few years of bad trimming will create a tree that spends more energy on wood production and not fruit production.
Frankly, I could type a lot of random stuff that needs to be thought about, but the truth is that growing food takes research, learning, and practice. We have spent years learning about gardening and homesteading, finding the right land and home for ourselves, and working it to start producing for our family. Years. And we still feel like raw beginners. It is not as simple as just throwing a few seeds in a garden box and watering them, although that is a good start.
To bring this back to startups, one very helpful product may simply be a training program to help people through the learning process and guide them on how to figure things out for their own land.
Having something planted in an outside soil plot generally means that you have more leeway for making mistakes. You can be a little over or underwatered and things won't die. You can miss the nutrient mix a bit, and things will still grow even if they aren't optimal. You generally don't have to worry about micronutrients and the like until you've been growing in the same plot for some number of years.
Hydroponics tends to be higher maintenance. You may have to water every day. You may have to feed and fertilize more often. You probably have to be more vigilant about pests and disease since you probably don't get help from the local environment.
While it probably doesn't make sense for everyone to have their own, manually maintained hydroponic garden, it might make sense to have large-scale, but local, highly automated gardens that produce food for the surrounding community.
Great idea.
>Frankly, I could type a lot of random stuff that needs to be thought about, but the truth is that growing food takes research, learning, and practice. We have spent years learning about gardening and homesteading, finding the right land and home for ourselves, and working it to start producing for our family.
Totally agree.
>Learning to produce food takes more time and energy than people realize.
, I can say that learning enough of the basics to be moderately successful in growing vegetables, or other plant food, does not take a lot of time (except for trees) or effort - unless there are some exceptional negative conditions, e.g. the soil possibility I mentioned, about your yard. To elaborate on that, it could be that the soil was brought in from somewhere and has some chemicals in it that are not good for plants.
Source: Done a good amount of organic gardening in my teens - grew many different kinds of vegetables and stuff in our home garden.
But in general, codingdave's comment is right, that it takes time to learn to do it well - as for any area or skill.
I have to weed them out of my compost pile because they grow so fast and heavy they eventually collapse on themselves. In my small, Paris garden I've managed to grow tomatoes, sweet peppers, and potatoes.
Not enough to be sustainable but it does create interesting conversation when friends are over and they see me reach out the window and grab a few veggies for the salad.
Around here, there are also lots of mice, wabbits, squirrels, deer, etc. A successful garden would likely need to be completely enclosed.
Never mind all the work. Until food becomes a lot more expensive, most people probably won't take up growing it.
(Not disagreeing that the tomatoes aren't better and it wouldn't be all around the healthy thing to do...)