Anyone else want to grow your own food?

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27 Mar 2017, 5:00 pm

I've grown potatoes, tomatoes (tough in the UK unless you have a greenhouse), chillies (inside on a sunny windowsill), rocket (really, really easy), carrots, courgette (another easy one), berries (strawberries, gooseberries, redcurrants, blackcurrants, raspberries, tayberries), herbs (thyme, basil, oregano, sage, rosemary, chives). All of this in a small UK garden. I'm not an expert or anything, I just muddle along and generally it seems to work out okay.

I also used to hunt rabbit and squirrel for meat, butchered a roadkill deer and foraged for wild garlic, seabeet mushrooms (make sure you really know what you're doing and start with a really identifiable species - cep is good) and shellfish (mussels, crab, winkles).

It's hard to find the time nowadays but I used to love it!

fifasy wrote:

I've found a planter pot you can buy in the UK from John Lewis that is made out of stone and resin and reviewers say it drains really well so I'm probably going to buy one of them. Then start just growing a potato plant in that. If I get passionate about it I might buy more pots.

Standard black rubbish bins would be cheaper, I did that and it worked really well. You just keep adding compost as the potatoes grow. The hardest bit is getting the sunlight into the bins when the plants are young.

Old car tyres are supposed to work as well - you add another tyre on top and fill with compost as the plant grows.

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MagicMeerkat
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27 Mar 2017, 6:32 pm

fifasy wrote:

HelloWorld314 wrote:

Well I raise small amounts of rats and rabbits in my apartment for my dog and two cats. They save money, but getting rid of the fur and cleaning the meat for human consumption is just way too troublesome and not worth it IMO.

How old are the rats and rabbits when you slaughter them?

I wouldn't be interested in rearing animals myself. It would be strictly vegan food I'd be interested in growing.

Me too but rabbit poop is one of the best fertilizers.

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fifasy
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28 Mar 2017, 2:07 am

HelloWorld314 wrote:

fifasy wrote:

HelloWorld314 wrote:

How old are the rats and rabbits when you slaughter them?

I wouldn't be interested in rearing animals myself. It would be strictly vegan food I'd be interested in growing.

Rats before 8 weeks, rabbits before 4 months. Fair enough, though humans need a variety of veggies to get all nutrients. Growing so many different veggies on your own might be really hard?

Do you not feel sorry for the rats and rabbits? That isn't a very long life for them. I would feel bad raising them to slaughter only for cat and dog food. Especially because cats would quite easily survive by hunting wild food on their own. Dogs also do not need that much meat in their diet, unlike cats they can adapt to having less meat and more of a vegetarian diet. It is true that dogs belong to the order Carnivora but they are actually omnivores. The canine body has the ability to transform certain amino acids, the building blocks or protein, into others, meaning that dogs can get all the amino acids they need while avoiding meat.

fifasy
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28 Mar 2017, 2:09 am

liveandrew wrote:

fifasy wrote:

You've lived! I imagine you would come in very handy in a zombie apocalypse. :wink:

I might have to look into courgette and rocket as well then. Both foods I could do with eating more of.

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28 Mar 2017, 2:27 am

I already do grow my own food.
At the moment I have butternut pumpkins, tomatoes, bok choy, cucumbers, capsicums, garlic, shallots, chillies, beetroot, strawberries, paw paw, rosellas, mandarins, nasturtiums, pineapples, turmeric, ginger and lots of different herbs growing.
I forage coconuts, mangoes, plums, lychees, dandelion greens and yams.
Fishing and crabbing isn't too bad where I live either.

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liveandrew
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28 Mar 2017, 2:47 am

fifasy wrote:

I might have to look into courgette and rocket as well then. Both foods I could do with eating more of.

The only issue with courgettes is that you may end up with too may of them! They're also quite large plants. I planted the rocket in a large compost filled pot (diameter ~50cm) and they'll keep regrowing for a couple of years (dying off in winter and then coming back). After that, the leaves get a little small and stringy.

Give herbs a go as well as they take up little room and smell and taste lovely. Rosemary and sage are really easy and will keep going for several years.

liveandrew
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28 Mar 2017, 2:49 am

Raleigh wrote:

Nice!

MarkJ
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28 Mar 2017, 3:10 am

In the future I'd love to be able to but at this point work and other activities actually make it hard to find time to maintain something like a veggie garden. While where we live we have a big garden, it's certainly something we (my Dad and I) want to do in the near future.

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28 Mar 2017, 7:29 am

The reasons are more practical. They have THE BEST Internet-service of the ENTIRE country.
Not only that, the cost of the Internet-service is very low, too. Also much less corruption than where I am now.

fifasy wrote:

Ban-Dodger wrote:

I wish I had land (particularly in Kansas), I wish I owned land (particularly in Kansas), I would like to have access to being able to grow food on my own farm with excellent soil (particularly in Kansas), perhaps even have it be in a green-house (particularly in Kansas), but most of all I need to allocate resources to be able to move to Kansas...

Why Kansas? Is that a Wizard of Oz reference?

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28 Mar 2017, 9:11 am

I would like to, I would like to be full on self sufficient and off the grid if I had the means to do it

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28 Mar 2017, 10:32 am

Lunella wrote:

Nature helps depression tons

Agree wholeheartedly.

I've recently grown some radishes for experimentation, but this summer i'll be growing lots of different seeds. When i was younger we had a small plot of farmland we could grow on, the owner didn't want to use it so we grew potatoes, peas and ate it all. Super fresh food, tasted quite good.

One idea if you don't have land: Either get a pot you can grow in and fill it with some good earth. One alternative is to do so called "guerilla gardening" and plant your stuff on someone elses property (usually without permission, you can always ask for permission). On problem though: If they find the plants and take it, you have no legal right to it, but if you get away with it - hey, free food.

Also when planting in an open area unprotected by a fence, you have to consider that animals like to eat too

A net or fencing can prevent animals eating all your produce. On the place i'm gonna grow on this summer, there are deer and smaller animals so i'm considering everything from a simple net to a full greenhouse.

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