they’re one of the fruits where the supermarket variety is the supermarket variety because it survives the trip, not because they’re good
meanwhile tomato plants are really low effort. if you have favorable conditions you can do literally nothing
—
Where are you *finding* conditions that aren’t full of weeds and wildlife-competing-with-you-for-the-food and the occasional blight? A greenhouse?
(…actually, that might not be a bad idea. I *have* heard of people building little personal greenhouses in their backyards, and nothing keeps squirrels from taking one bite out of your mom’s tomato and walking away like a fucking *door*, right?)
Re: surviving the trip, home-grown zucchinis taste about the same but we’ve noticed the shelf life is *vastly* longer. Store-bought zucchinis start to shrivel up and go soft within a few days of bringing them home; home-grown zucchinis can sit in the fridge for several *weeks*. Makes it a lot easier to plan your meals.
Honestly, probably a good part of my problem with gardening is that, because *Mom* loves home-grown tomatoes for some fucking reason, they end up the focal point of the garden and a great deal of my gardening-related labour is thoroughly alienated: I never see the fruits *or* the vegetables of my labour.
A garden optimised for what *I* thought was most worth growing would have zero tomatoes and more garlic and zucchini, with perhaps just enough potatoes to keep in practice so that I can put potatoes in the victory garden. And probably more perennials like mulberries. And possibly mushrooms. And I would want to do a bunch of research and expert-consultation regarding which weeds are secretly edible, since anything *that* easy to grow sounds like something I should take advantage of.
(I’ve been meaning to do some more digging into how to eat dandelions. I’ve heard you can put the new greens in salads and the petals in pancake batter, but I don’t normally eat salads *or* pancakes. Can you just, like, munch on a raw dandelion flower straight-up? Can I fulfil my childhood dream of eating a pretty flower I found in the backyard?)
Yeah, you can just munch any part of dandelion – I often do that when I’m reading in the garden. Older leaves get bitter and shouldn’t be eaten in big amounts, and roots need cooking. Flower is just fine though.
—
Hell yeah!
—
This is another area where I like a lot of the things the communing-with-nature people are putting out but for completely different reasons. I want to know more about the natural world around me *so that I can exploit it better*. Which wildflowers can I eat? What’s the name of that one plant where when you run through a field of them it sounds like popcorn popping? Can I eat those too?!
(I never stopped wanting to stick interesting plants in my mouth: I just learned to resist it, to assume everything was poisonous until proven otherwise. And for the most part, nobody ever taught me which interesting plants I didn’t have to resist.)
I never stopped wanting to stick interesting plants in my mouth: I just learned to resist it
i never learned this and im still alive. i like to think it’s made me stronger
as for tomatos I don’t think you have to do that much? if your soil and weather conditions are good you can just put the seeds in the ground and come back later to find that you have a giant cherry tomato bush which is overrunning the rest of your garden and that produces way to many tomatos for any ten people to eat
if you don’t have this you might need to water them? I remember watering tomatos. most of the weeds around here don’t get tall enough to fuck with tomatos much. if it’s a major issue you can put them in pots I guess. we never had trouble with squirrels, altho we did have to stop growing tomatos in the backyard because one of the dogs ate them all. I don’t grow many tomatos because I don’t like tomatos, but fresh ones really are better.
idk about potatos specifically but I think durable transportable stuff like potatos and onions is the relative advantage of actual farmers. relative to growing fragile vegetables that kind of thing is probably only worth doing to the extent you’re having fun with it
My mom has tried to grow tomatoes pretty much every year for the past 10+ years and we have had very few home-grown tomatoes to eat
It might be where we live– people not from here think you can grow anything in Georgia but the summer heat really is too much for a lot of plants to handle. The state was also plagued by droughts for a lot of my childhood.
We also had a lot of Critters come sample the garden. Deer, squirrels, rabbits, tomato hornworms, etc etc etc. It always made my mom SO dismayed to come outside one morning to find that a deer had chomped off the entire top half of her biggest tomato plant, but you’d think she would have learned to expect it after about the fourth time
We DID sometimes get to eat the tomatoes if we picked them while still green and then used them for fried green tomatoes. Fried green tomatoes are really delicious. It’s just not what we had wanted to have when we planted tomatoes!
I’ll admit I don’t know anything about Georgia. I think it’s where depressing movies about plantations take place. it produces SCAD students. there’s a big airport I’ve never connected thru.
I asked my mother about tomatos and her opinion is that they’re easy to grow but you have to water them very regularly or else they’ll be sad and also blighted. this is maybe extra true if it’s very hot and sunny, which I’ve been told is the case in georgia. conversely farther north you may have trouble getting enough sun? that could make tomatos slower, maybe
idk about deer. the three places I’ve grown tomatos were:
suburb, but not near the forest so no deer. plenty of squirrels and rabbits but they were never a problem
fire escape. only cats and pigeons, neither of which are much trouble for tomatos
middle of nowhere. shitloads of deer but in the summer they just eat stuff in the forest. huge problem for slow growing perennials but not so much for tomatos
The previous post [link] reminded me to post an update on this:
>>What’s the name of that one plant where when you run through a field of them it sounds like popcorn popping? Can I eat those too?!
I took a picture of a popcorn flower and searched by similar images, and it’s a Plantago lanceolata (sometimes called a ribwort plantain). And apparently you *can* kind of eat them [link], though it’s more of a medicinal thing than a food thing.
Tags:
#oh look an update #food #gardening #reply via reblog #flowers #the more you know #poison cw? #proud citizen of the Future
Unfortunately, this image needs to be updated for 2021.
Tags:
#food #covid19 #language #today in Apocalypse Memes #don’t eat that challah #(…wait wait hang on a minute) #(something just hit me) #(I think I will make it a separate post though)
Someone I know not well enough to voice my opinion on the subject said something like why didn’t God make potatoes a low-calorie food so I am here to say: God made them like that because their nutrition density IS what makes them healthy. By God I mean Andean agricultural technicians. Potato is healthy BECAUSE potato holds calories and vitamins. Do not malign potato
For all evolutionary history, life has struggled against calorie deficit… So much energy goes into finding food that there is no time for anything else. Our ancestors selectively bred root vegetables to create the potato, so that we might be the first species whose daily existence doesn’t consist of trying to find the nutrients necessary for survival. One potato can rival the calorie count of many hours of foraging… Eat a potato, and you free up so much time to create and build and connect with your fellow man. Without potato where would you be?? Do not stand on the shoulders of giants and think thyself tall!!
Tags:
#I ate potatoes today and I approve this message #give or take some hyperbole‚ anyway #(it is deeply twisted that ”this food contains less sustenance” is a thing sellers charge *extra* for) #(if I want less food I will *eat* less food) #((besides‚ my appetite is quite good at adjusting for calorie density and is not fooled by your hollowed-out shit)) #food #disordered eating #proud citizen of The Future
Dystopian Agricultural Breadbasket World [Worldbuilding]
In most science fiction, the Breadbasket worlds are sprawling farmlands with sparse population, the better to not eat the food. However, with fusion and automated building technology, you can build incredibly dense urban farms and arcologies, support a population of tens of billions, and still produce tons of food.
Thus I introduce to you Agricola, a polluted factory world, where the high tech factory is plant production:
The world has 15 billion people, many of whom are poorly fed. The primary and driving focus of the entire planet is toward agricultural, and specifically flora, production.
Industry involves growing plants, yes. But also maintaining the farming arcologies, and the machines that do the work, and some of the basic production of chemicals needed for the hydroponics. And the scientific R&D people. And then there are the people who exist to support those workers, all the way down the chain.
This world is an unpleasant hellhole to live on due to all of the pollution in the environment, and due to the nearly complete wipeout of non-foodstuff native ecology.
But this world, with 15 billion people, produces enough food to sustain 200 billion people across the Confederation, of 14 different sapient species, as well as nearly a trillion pets and livestock.
The vast majority of food production occurs inside the arcologies. However, there is a form of “luxury natural” foodstuffs that are grown outside in natural light. There is essentially no difference here (the hydroponics stuff is often of better quality), but is more “natural” to these consumers. Thus a great deal of area that could be used for more ecologies has instead been devoted to the more lucrative luxury markets, to the detriment of people who might like to spread out.
This pollution is not entirely what you’d expect. First and foremost, the atmosphere has far too much oxygen, meaning there are frequent fires on the vast planes of fields. Scrubbers take as much of this out of the atmosphere near the fields as possible, but they don’t really care about ash in the city. But the high O2 content also means that people (a) have more energy and focus to do their work, but (b) age faster due to oxidation of their tissues. They effectively are “burning” at the molecular level. The high oxygen also supercharges the pests, allowing the rapid evolution of mega-bugs, as existed on prehistoric Earth (recently, plagues of decimeter-long locusts have become a problem).
There is low CO2, meaning that there is too little greenhouse effect, naturally. So the engineers decided to start producing CFCs, which are highly efficient greenhouse gases. As a bonus, they’ve wiped out the entirety of the polar ozone layer, to the benefit of plants that photosynthesize on UV light. So this world is cold, with energy devoted to melting away encroaching glaciers, and people have just adapted to near constant sunburn
[OPENS FRIDGE, REMOVES TUPPERWARE CONTAINER LABELLED “Pomegranates from land of dead do not eat”]
[I REMOVE A SECOND CONTAINER LABELLED “Fairy apples do not eat (Autumn Court)]
[I APPROACH THE BLENDER]
Hi there, and welcome to my channel!
Today we’re going to be playing with Fae loopholes: see, the rule is, for each “seed” you eat, you’re stuck in the underworld for a month… and for each “bite” you take of these fairy apples, you’re bound to the Autumn Court for a month…
My plan? Well, if I turn it in to a smoothie, you definitely can’t measure it in “bites”, right? We’ll also be finding out whether the underworld defines a seed as a whole object, or if it’s still a seed once you blend–
Ugh, BRB, angels are trying to thwart me again. This keeps happening!
Tags:
#fae #food #mythology #fun with loopholes #storytime #poison cw?
#yes but only if it has butter chicken sauce instead of gravy #fuck gravy #fusion cuisine all the way‚ baby! #(yes butter chicken poutine *is* a thing and it is *amazing*) #(very rich though) #food #our home and cherished land #this probably deserves some other warning tag but I am not sure what
they’re one of the fruits where the supermarket variety is the supermarket variety because it survives the trip, not because they’re good
meanwhile tomato plants are really low effort. if you have favorable conditions you can do literally nothing
—
Where are you *finding* conditions that aren’t full of weeds and wildlife-competing-with-you-for-the-food and the occasional blight? A greenhouse?
(…actually, that might not be a bad idea. I *have* heard of people building little personal greenhouses in their backyards, and nothing keeps squirrels from taking one bite out of your mom’s tomato and walking away like a fucking *door*, right?)
Re: surviving the trip, home-grown zucchinis taste about the same but we’ve noticed the shelf life is *vastly* longer. Store-bought zucchinis start to shrivel up and go soft within a few days of bringing them home; home-grown zucchinis can sit in the fridge for several *weeks*. Makes it a lot easier to plan your meals.
Honestly, probably a good part of my problem with gardening is that, because *Mom* loves home-grown tomatoes for some fucking reason, they end up the focal point of the garden and a great deal of my gardening-related labour is thoroughly alienated: I never see the fruits *or* the vegetables of my labour.
A garden optimised for what *I* thought was most worth growing would have zero tomatoes and more garlic and zucchini, with perhaps just enough potatoes to keep in practice so that I can put potatoes in the victory garden. And probably more perennials like mulberries. And possibly mushrooms. And I would want to do a bunch of research and expert-consultation regarding which weeds are secretly edible, since anything *that* easy to grow sounds like something I should take advantage of.
(I’ve been meaning to do some more digging into how to eat dandelions. I’ve heard you can put the new greens in salads and the petals in pancake batter, but I don’t normally eat salads *or* pancakes. Can you just, like, munch on a raw dandelion flower straight-up? Can I fulfil my childhood dream of eating a pretty flower I found in the backyard?)
Yeah, you can just munch any part of dandelion – I often do that when I’m reading in the garden. Older leaves get bitter and shouldn’t be eaten in big amounts, and roots need cooking. Flower is just fine though.
—
Hell yeah!
—
This is another area where I like a lot of the things the communing-with-nature people are putting out but for completely different reasons. I want to know more about the natural world around me *so that I can exploit it better*. Which wildflowers can I eat? What’s the name of that one plant where when you run through a field of them it sounds like popcorn popping? Can I eat those too?!
(I never stopped wanting to stick interesting plants in my mouth: I just learned to resist it, to assume everything was poisonous until proven otherwise. And for the most part, nobody ever taught me which interesting plants I didn’t have to resist.)
I never stopped wanting to stick interesting plants in my mouth: I just learned to resist it
i never learned this and im still alive. i like to think it’s made me stronger
as for tomatos I don’t think you have to do that much? if your soil and weather conditions are good you can just put the seeds in the ground and come back later to find that you have a giant cherry tomato bush which is overrunning the rest of your garden and that produces way to many tomatos for any ten people to eat
if you don’t have this you might need to water them? I remember watering tomatos. most of the weeds around here don’t get tall enough to fuck with tomatos much. if it’s a major issue you can put them in pots I guess. we never had trouble with squirrels, altho we did have to stop growing tomatos in the backyard because one of the dogs ate them all. I don’t grow many tomatos because I don’t like tomatos, but fresh ones really are better.
idk about potatos specifically but I think durable transportable stuff like potatos and onions is the relative advantage of actual farmers. relative to growing fragile vegetables that kind of thing is probably only worth doing to the extent you’re having fun with it
My mom has tried to grow tomatoes pretty much every year for the past 10+ years and we have had very few home-grown tomatoes to eat
It might be where we live– people not from here think you can grow anything in Georgia but the summer heat really is too much for a lot of plants to handle. The state was also plagued by droughts for a lot of my childhood.
We also had a lot of Critters come sample the garden. Deer, squirrels, rabbits, tomato hornworms, etc etc etc. It always made my mom SO dismayed to come outside one morning to find that a deer had chomped off the entire top half of her biggest tomato plant, but you’d think she would have learned to expect it after about the fourth time
We DID sometimes get to eat the tomatoes if we picked them while still green and then used them for fried green tomatoes. Fried green tomatoes are really delicious. It’s just not what we had wanted to have when we planted tomatoes!
I’ll admit I don’t know anything about Georgia. I think it’s where depressing movies about plantations take place. it produces SCAD students. there’s a big airport I’ve never connected thru.
I asked my mother about tomatos and her opinion is that they’re easy to grow but you have to water them very regularly or else they’ll be sad and also blighted. this is maybe extra true if it’s very hot and sunny, which I’ve been told is the case in georgia. conversely farther north you may have trouble getting enough sun? that could make tomatos slower, maybe
idk about deer. the three places I’ve grown tomatos were:
suburb, but not near the forest so no deer. plenty of squirrels and rabbits but they were never a problem
fire escape. only cats and pigeons, neither of which are much trouble for tomatos
middle of nowhere. shitloads of deer but in the summer they just eat stuff in the forest. huge problem for slow growing perennials but not so much for tomatos
The squirrels, unfortunately, are dumb as all shit and will absolutely eat a rock on the off chance it might be a strawberry. the same rock. three times a week. and never complain about thier geological misfortune to other squirrels so THOSE squirrels come over and eat rocks too.
So the Berry Zone will require psychological warfare, physical fortifications and regular dog patrols if I’m going to be able to forage fruits like a marmoset as my heart desires.
Come on, give them some credit. Their level of intelligence is irrelevant. Squirrels are made for gnawing through hard things, they’re not gonna be scared of some rock just because it might be an actual rock.
Tags:
#gardening #food #interesting ideas #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what
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