• unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de
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    7 months ago

    Some things are just super easy to grow, others take so much effort its too much for the average person. But hell yeah, grow ur own food if u are lucky enough to own a garden.

    • Neato@ttrpg.network
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      7 months ago

      Yeah. When I lived in NW Florida (ugh), jalapenos grew like weeds in a small pot. Always had way too many.

      Also a fun fact: in early spring you can often see green grass-like shoots growing before the grass starts and are quite tall. Those are wild alliums, the same family as garlic, onions and scallions.

          • Dasus@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            Technically it’s poisonous to dogs, yeah. It’s a mild poison, but like chocolate (and grapes and raisins), they shouldn’t have it.

            Leeks are part of the Allium family (which also includes onion, chives, and garlic) and are poisonous to dogs and cats. Garlic is considered to be about 5-times as potent as onion and leeks. Certain breeds and species are more sensitive, including cats and Japanese breeds of dogs (e.g., Akita, Shiba Inu).

            https://www.petpoisonhelpline.com/poison/leeks/

            • kbotc@lemmy.world
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              7 months ago

              Grapes and raisins are a different class. Alliums and chocolate are bad, sure, but if your dog has a bad reaction to grapes and really raisins, it can be 2-3 raisins cause kidney failure. They’re not quite sure about the mechanism, only that it doesn’t take much and isn’t an always thing.

              • Dasus@lemmy.world
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                7 months ago

                Oh yes, they’re not a “mild” on the poison scale compared to like, grass onion and such.

                Very true.

          • EtherWhack@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            I know cultivated onion and garlic are definitely poisonous to dogs. (and cats) I’m not sure though if wild allium contains the same chemical, and in the same amount, but it would be likely, which could easily lead to the hemolytic anemia.

      • Dojan@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        I struggle so hard with peppers. Jalapeños growing like weeds sounds like a dream.

        • BubbleMonkey@slrpnk.net
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          7 months ago

          It might benefit you to know that pepper plants can be kept alive nearly indefinitely if you give them good enough conditions. So if you keep them in a pot, you can trim them and move them inside over cold months (bare stems is fine as long as they don’t dry out), and then in spring they are already super well established and big and start putting out peppers really early.

          I never do well with new pepper plants, but second season they produce like crazy.

          • Dojan@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            Thanks you for the tips, I actually didn’t know they were perennial. That said, I think they just aren’t too fond of the climate here. I’d need a greenhouse (and space outdoors) or a heating mat and a decent sun light. I tried with chilies the other year, and even got a few fruits, but they were small and never ripened. The plant really struggled. To be fair, the plant was an experiment from the get-go. I germinated it from seeds I got in a cheapo chili flake jar from Lidl so I didn’t have huge expectations to begin with.

        • Holyhandgrenade@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          I live in Norway and one year I planted 10 chili plants. I treated those plants like royalty and in the end I got like maybe 2 chilis per plant lol

          • Dojan@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            Yeah, that echoes my experience here in Sweden. I guess the reason we use so much rotted fish in our cuisine is because we had no other way to introduce stronger flavours. 😭

        • Neato@ttrpg.network
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          7 months ago

          I will note that when I moved to MD the plant did well but grew like 1 pepper all year. Gave up after that. Heartburn also made it less viable to eat so many. :p

        • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          The growing season is so short here, you need to start them inside 2 months before planting them outside if you want them ready before the first frost in sept gets them.

          • Dojan@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            Right now I only have an inside. My balcony gets morning sun, but not for very long. :(

      • RBWells@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Florida gardener too.

        Jalapenos do great, okra grows in the summer! The summer! Mustard greens will too, and the Stokes. Purple sweet potatoes. In the cooler seasons, collards, lettuces, fennel, I’ve had surprising success with broccoli and cauliflower. Tomatoes I can grow whenever but birds eat them. Radishes fail me every time. No carrots or radishes have worked, ever… I just learned asparagus is perennial here, going to try that too.

        • TheLoneMinon@lemm.ee
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          7 months ago

          My wife and I just moved from a townhouse to an actual house with a backyard so we can garden again. We’re around the Sarasota Area and the yard is really soft and sandy. Pretty sure something’s digging under there which is why it’s so soft… But they were there first so what’re ya gonna do. Any suggestions for planting this summer? Definitely gonna try Okra

          • RBWells@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            Congratulations, I didn’t know anyone could afford a house in Sarasota right now, wow!

            Yes to okra, it loves our summer, unless you have the nematodes that love it more than we do. Jalafuego hybrid jalapenos are robust plants and spicy peppers that can survive summer. Hibiscus likes our summer, and you are far enough south to grow mangoes.

            For the garden garden you might do better with raised bed and some better soil over the sandy soil, but mangoes and citrus like it. “Well drained” as they say.

            • TheLoneMinon@lemm.ee
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              7 months ago

              Oh God no we’re still renting. We bounced around the idea of buying something but prices are insane, and we’re not sure we want to settle in Florida. The home insurance cost and the increasing risk of big storms would make me too anxious.

              Thanks for the advice! We were definitely thinking raised beds, but wanted to try our luck with a few in-ground things.

    • Wanderer@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      Lettuce and tomatoes are surprisingly good value. I’d put them top tier.

      Not sure what else is really good. Beans are easy but you never get enough.

  • Allero@lemmy.today
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    7 months ago

    Pretty sure zoomers just troll boomers who genuinely think the new generation is stupid

    • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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      7 months ago

      As a millennial…zoomer humor is soooo much better than boomer humor.

      • Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        You don’t like boomer humor knee slapper jokes like

        “My wife is a bitch, please take her”

        And

        “Oh look it’s a homosexual”

        ?

        • rmuk@feddit.uk
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          7 months ago

          Picture of a Minion with the caption: “Tuesday? I thought you said WINE-day.”

        • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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          7 months ago

          I don’t think I’ve ever seen “oh look it’s a homosexual” as a boomer humor joke, but definitely a lot of using LGBT as a sideshow.

          • Stupidmanager@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            Hang with my dad for a bit. When he’s lucid, he’ll pop Forrest Gump voices, poke fun at gender neutral pronouns and talk loudly in the open about my gay neighbors (who are amazing). All this often leads to a fight and learning that it’s not ok to verbally abuse boomers, but it’s ok for them to verbally abuse everyone else. This privilege comes with age… so I’m told.

            Trust me, you’re not missing out

      • JustAnotherRando@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        As another millennial… you’re not wrong, but you basically put the bar on the floor there. The funniest thing about most boomer humor is that they actually think they’re clever.

      • DillyDaily@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        I keep having this glitch where I’m stuck in the opening scene with the jojo cubicle. I’m supposed to get a letter telling me I’ve inherited a farm but that hasn’t happened yet, anyone else got this bug?

        • uis@lemm.ee
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          7 months ago

          You can skip it if you will go to granny’s dacha anyway.

  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Neighbor tried to plant potatoes. She got about six pounds worth of top and no tuber.

    We spent weeks debugging and still don’t know what went wrong.

    • HatFullOfSky@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Potatoes you have to keep mounding up with dirt to force the plant to grow more roots (tubers) instead of the leafy tops.

        • Nimrod@lemm.ee
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          7 months ago

          Potato tubers are not actually roots. They are modified stems. So the surest way to force more potatoes is to “hill” them. In the commercial fields this is done with a huge tractor raking soil from in between planting rows and piling it up on the plants. You essentially bury the plants stem as it grows taller. Then the buds on the stem will push out stolons (horizontal underground stems.) these will terminate in tubers, aka: potatoes!

          Source: did potato disease research for my PhD.

          Additional edit: loose/sandy soil is critical. Too dense of soil and your tubers can’t expand well.

            • Nimrod@lemm.ee
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              7 months ago

              Warning: I am not a beet expert. But I believe beets are actual roots. Just like carrots. And I think you only get one beer per plant? Burying the stem would just make it harder for new leaves to come up.

              Potatoes are pretty unique in this sense. Even sweet potatoes are not the same.

      • AutistoMephisto@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        The leafy top is called a haulm and on commercial farms the harvester has a header that removes the haulm before the main part of the harvester scoops up the potatoes. Anyone who’s played Farming Simulator is familiar with these machines, such as the Ropa Panther 2.

  • Wrench@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    You can just take the bottom bulb from green onions, and just stick it into some dirt. Even when they’re old and the green parts are slimy. I never bother watering, and they do just fine.

    You can even stick them in a glass of water to get them to freshen up a little, but without dirt for nutrients, they will thin out and die eventually.

    • Valmond@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Tomatoes works too, paprika take the seeds out dry them a week plant them (inside first), etc.

    • DillyDaily@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Do this with a regular onion, especially if you’ve already got one in the pantry trying to sprout. As it grows you’ll get onion greens that work just like scallions in any recipe. Let it go to seed, now you have infinite onions, but depending on your local climate and luck, leave your original onion bulb to winter, and shoot again, and it has probably split into new bulbs, so you’ll probably get 2 new onions from the plant, plus onion greens, plus seeds. Eat one bulb, and leave the other bulb to grow more onion greens.

      I’ve never bothered using the seeds, I just keep a bulb or two in the pot. Been 5 years. I still buy onions if I want something like onion jam or French onion soup, where I need like 1kg of onions. But Ive never had to buy scallions, and I’ve got onion flavour all year long through onion greens (you can dehydrate them, and freeze them really easily too, to store them when you have more than you can use)

      I also highly recommend throwing peas into a large tray of soil. Litteraly just grab a bunch of aluminium foil disposable oven pans if you need to, stab some holes in them with a knife, an inch or two of soil, some dried whole peas or fresh garden peas, a sprinkle of more soil or just a wet sheet of kitchen roll/paper towel on top.

      You probably won’t get peas, but you’ll have tons of pea tendrils for salads. On my balcony it’s the only “salad green” I’ve had any luck growing. I have a pretty black thumb. I can’t even manage to sprout chia seeds without them moulding, and I’ve never been able to grow mint despite broad casting mint seeds directly into my garden, urging the gardening gods to spite me with weedy mint but no dice.

      When I buy peas, 4/5ths go in the fridge to eat, the other 5th gets planted, and I’ll get ~10 dishes from the tendrils vs 1 dish from the peas. Nutritionally the peas have more protein, but lentils are cheap, salad is expensive, so this works for my budget.

  • MuchPineapples@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    The trick with garlic is to just bury it everywhere in your garden where there’s space, no need for a vegetable garden. The leaves take minimal space and digging them back up only requires making a small hole, plus they apparently keep some pests away.

    • Cheradenine
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      7 months ago

      It’s happy in a pot on the windowsill, doesn’t much care about soil quality, can be harvested just for the greens.

      I plant it everywhere though.

      • Captain Aggravated
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        7 months ago

        This is accurate; grocery store tomatoes are bred for durability rather than taste. The canned tomatoes down the soup aisle are honestly better than the fresh ones in the produce section. A large pot in a sunny corner of your back porch can do a lot better than your local supermarket.

        • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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          7 months ago

          depends on who grows them, we finally started getting domestic tomatoes in stores again here in sweden and they actually smell and taste like tomatoes should.

          They don’t need to use the ones that are bred for durability if the shipping takes like an hour by truck…

          • Captain Aggravated
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            7 months ago

            Here in America? If you want higher quality farm-grown produce find a farmer’s market, the supermarket is going to make the most spreadsheet friendly decision every single time.

        • Teppichbrand@feddit.de
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          7 months ago

          If they are not organic they put fertilizers on them which is basically salt that makes the cells swell with water but not nutrition nor taste.

        • BarqsHasBite@lemmy.ca
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          7 months ago

          Supposed to be even more, particularly because you can pick at peak ripeness. Store ones they pick far beyond ripe so they transport and handle better.

          • noodlejetski@lemm.ee
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            7 months ago

            yes, and the same goes for pretty much every other vegetable (and fruit, for that matter) out there.

    • wander1236
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      7 months ago

      Tomatoes and garlic, what else could you possibly need tbh

    • mad_asshatter@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      You can feed your dog tomatoes, and you don’t even have to bother with seeding!

      Or fertilizer!

    • DeviantOvary@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Cries in having no sunlight in the apartment. Mine didn’t survive the dark apartment life, so can’t confirm.

  • Sam_Bass@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Picking up gardening at any age is a good thing not only as a way to stay active and keep your pantry better stocked but you also get a good sense of accomplishment