My first year, I planted zuchini and it grew like crazy. Unfortunately so did the beetles that ate it. Every morning I went out to water it, and they’d scatter. I didn’t want to use pesticide on my food, so I waged a war spraying the hose with one hand and crushing them with the other. I have a bad back, so that was fun. The next year I added cantaloupe, ready for the same song and dance. Between the bugs and the heat, I managed to harvest one single zuchini before they ate what hadn’t shriveled up under the sun. The year after that, I tried onions. They overtook the flower bed and the root system is weedlike. I think I put too many, too close together. This year I’ve been in too much pain and its been too hot, so I haven’t even tried.
That was all at my parents place. My apartment doesn’t have much patio space, so it gets partial sun. I’ve tried to raise tomatoes, carrots, zuchini and anything that sprouts from my compost. Everything starts out ok but by a month the sun has shifted and doesn’t hit the space the same the rest of the summer.
I understand if I had better land, more time, more sun, and no bugs maybe it would be easy. But you gotta be kidding me.
I’ve had issues with bugs which has mostly been solved by interplanting everything. Every tomato, pepper, and basil plant is in different parts of the garden with marigolds and other companion plants around. Bugs like monocrops, they tend to have lower pressure when you mix things up. Bugs still get a few things, but they are a lot less focused than when I grew things in large monocrop beds. The bad back makes it hard though, planting can be hard on your back.
It sounds like you have quite a lot of expertise most people don’t have, which is probably why you find growing food relatively easy and many don’t. It’s not just needing the weekly time to plant and maintain the land, or needing to have good land in the first place, that stops people, it’s also not having time to build up that expertise.
Building up expertise… you mean like watch any of the thousands of accessible YouTube videos that say to do exactly this. I’m an amateur in the garden, watching a video to solve a simple problem being called expertise feels like you’re giving it more weight than it needs. We have much of the knowledge of human history at our fingertips, no expertise needed.
My first year, I planted zuchini and it grew like crazy. Unfortunately so did the beetles that ate it. Every morning I went out to water it, and they’d scatter. I didn’t want to use pesticide on my food, so I waged a war spraying the hose with one hand and crushing them with the other. I have a bad back, so that was fun. The next year I added cantaloupe, ready for the same song and dance. Between the bugs and the heat, I managed to harvest one single zuchini before they ate what hadn’t shriveled up under the sun. The year after that, I tried onions. They overtook the flower bed and the root system is weedlike. I think I put too many, too close together. This year I’ve been in too much pain and its been too hot, so I haven’t even tried. That was all at my parents place. My apartment doesn’t have much patio space, so it gets partial sun. I’ve tried to raise tomatoes, carrots, zuchini and anything that sprouts from my compost. Everything starts out ok but by a month the sun has shifted and doesn’t hit the space the same the rest of the summer.
I understand if I had better land, more time, more sun, and no bugs maybe it would be easy. But you gotta be kidding me.
I’ve had issues with bugs which has mostly been solved by interplanting everything. Every tomato, pepper, and basil plant is in different parts of the garden with marigolds and other companion plants around. Bugs like monocrops, they tend to have lower pressure when you mix things up. Bugs still get a few things, but they are a lot less focused than when I grew things in large monocrop beds. The bad back makes it hard though, planting can be hard on your back.
It sounds like you have quite a lot of expertise most people don’t have, which is probably why you find growing food relatively easy and many don’t. It’s not just needing the weekly time to plant and maintain the land, or needing to have good land in the first place, that stops people, it’s also not having time to build up that expertise.
Building up expertise… you mean like watch any of the thousands of accessible YouTube videos that say to do exactly this. I’m an amateur in the garden, watching a video to solve a simple problem being called expertise feels like you’re giving it more weight than it needs. We have much of the knowledge of human history at our fingertips, no expertise needed.