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In 1893 a national recession forced many out of work. Detroit's mayor Pingree (eventually to become MI's gov) came up with the idea to offer empty city lots, tools and seeds to the unemployed as part of their relief benefits. The plan was a success and copied by many other cities. Chicago still has an active community garden program, started with the Victory Gardens of the '40s. https://www.chicagoparkdistrict.com/...rden#jump16643
I wonder how many vacant lot spaces there are available in cities today compared to how many there were available back in 1893 when there was less congestion and less population.
This short lived thread was started just as CoV was gaining momentum...Now that Inflation is the new hot problem, I wonder how many people will start to grow their own now?
I grew up on the NW side of Chicago where even in the '50s there were 2 empty lots on our block (Only in Chicago is a rock, weed & broken glass filled 25' x 100' lot euphamistically referred to as "a prairie.") It also had a house (the farm house when the area had been a farm and not subdivided and developed until the '20s, only 30 yrs earlier) on a triple lot. Three of those properties were built upon by 1960....
Food prices will have to go quite a lot higher before it becomes realistic to grow-your-own.
Poor people are affected by high grocery prices more than other people (as a percentage of their income) but they have less time to work in a garden than anyone because they may have 2 or more jobs, be too unhealthy to do it, have no place to make it happen.
Gardening to grow food has a lot of other disincentives: lack of knowledge, expense of equipment (shovels, rakes and more), lack of good dirt to plant in, protecting your food from predators (humans and other animals), the physical labor required, the bugs and diseases that kill before you get anything to eat.
I've been a gardener every home we owned but it's never paid it's way, it's my healthy hobby.
Gardening is a bit like cooking (another great hobby), easy to buy what you want so why do it yourself the hard way?
I love gardening and cooking but am also glad I can buy produce to cook, especially in the winter.
My veg garden doesn't pay for itself, but my father, who owned the house before me, fed the entire street with fresh stuff all summer and had to give the rest to a soup kitchen. If you know how, you can do anything. It's a life skill and should be taught in school.
Veggie gardens don't pay for themselves when you grow the typical leafy stuff. Growing potatoes, beans and peas are the only things worth growing from the nutritional standpoint. Grains are also nutritionally valuable but require too much land and processing to make them efficient choices. Everything else has such low nutritional density that they are not worth it except for their value in adding taste, texture, moisture & color to a meal.
Check out the nutritional content of potaoes https://nutritiondata.self.com/facts...roducts/2546/2 and they grow like weeds with minimal effort or resources. You get about one pound of produce per plant, and easily propagated each year from last year's excess crop.
I've tried corn with varying degrees of failure: pollination issues, small ears, earwigs. The people up the road dropped a line of kernels along their driveway and got 8 foot stalks covered in ears, but they ate none of them. It's too hot here
The nutritional issue is really for subsistence gardening. For backyard gardening, I saved $$$ on fresh herbs, heirloom tomatoes, Japanese cucumbers, asparagus, berries, figs.
On a homesteading forum that I frequent, one guy lists for "location"-- Too far south for corn, Too far north for cotton.
Corn needs a lot of N fertilizer and a big enough plot to get good pollination. My biggest problem with it is the deer and raccoons always beat me to the harvest.
Food prices will have to go quite a lot higher before it becomes realistic to grow-your-own.
Poor people are affected by high grocery prices more than other people (as a percentage of their income) but they have less time to work in a garden than anyone because they may have 2 or more jobs, be too unhealthy to do it, have no place to make it happen.
Gardening to grow food has a lot of other disincentives: lack of knowledge, expense of equipment (shovels, rakes and more), lack of good dirt to plant in, protecting your food from predators (humans and other animals), the physical labor required, the bugs and diseases that kill before you get anything to eat.
I've been a gardener every home we owned but it's never paid it's way, it's my healthy hobby.
Gardening is a bit like cooking (another great hobby), easy to buy what you want so why do it yourself the hard way?
I love gardening and cooking but am also glad I can buy produce to cook, especially in the winter.
I agree with this. Unless you are content on eating nothing but zucchini and potatoes, you can't grow your own for less than you can buy. I garden too, because the quality is much better, but it's not cheaper.
On a homesteading forum that I frequent, one guy lists for "location"-- Too far south for corn, Too far north for cotton.
Corn needs a lot of N fertilizer and a big enough plot to get good pollination. My biggest problem with it is the deer and raccoons always beat me to the harvest.
Too hot here for peas and cilantro, and carrots will sit under the soil doing nothing all summer and start growing in September.
Also it rains all winter long (no snow) but not one drop in the summer. I have a rain barrel and one winter I filled my shed with bottles of water from the barrel - which was a sight in spring that made me look insane.
I straddle the line between gardening and farming some years and others I just throw my hands up and settle for a few little things. Between work and the weather, you just have to accept that you're beat some seasons.
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