I’ve started harvesting from my garden (started from scratch ~2 years ago) and I’ve gotten some nice specimens, but yields were low. Some plants didn’t make it to harvest, some didn’t mature enough, and some didn’t fruit. My soil started with almost no nutrition and I’m doing this on a - quite frankly - very cheap budget; I haven’t done another soil test but it’s pretty clear I need to further improve the soil. I’ll run another test, grab some fertilizers and spread them out hopefully later this year.
I’m looking to adapt the soil to the plants but also the plants to the soil to some extent, so I’ve been keeping an eye out on what grows without much soil improvement. There’s definitely a few. More did well with the vegetative stage than the flowering stage (due presumably to a lack of phosphorous).
The things I’m growing in pots are generally doing pretty well, but they require a lot of watering (the whole garden does - without a reservoir system, if running water goes out people’s gardens will soon follow).
I tend to give things a little more shade these days than I would have when I was younger. Maybe I’m being counter-productive but it seems like I see more sunburn and drying out here/now. At some point I should take measurements but I don’t have time right now.
The weather was harsh at times for the spring/summer seasons. I have above average windbreaks and eliminated standing water so I didn’t lose too many plants.
I’ve had a lot of opportunist “weeds” crop up in areas of disturbed soil. They do very well at all stages haha. I let some grow for awhile to let them improve the soil in various ways, and then pulled anything non-native.
I’ve had lots of baby trees popping up, too. I keep mowing to a minimum. I let some stay, move others, and generally avoid getting rid of them as much as I can. But there’s a lot. I might have to start a business selling them lol. Anyway, there are reasons that people turn to famine foods in famine - because they’re the only thing that grows. A pretty simple concept, but probably not something we usually think about while mowing.
I’m not looking forward to moving pots in/out with the seasons changing. I also have propagations to tend to, and need to prepare more.
Not a bad season overall. I have some seed lineages I’m excited to continue. Modern conveniences make all of this possible, at least without other infrastructure prepped. Certain weather instabilities have definitely been a hassle although nothing was too extreme so far this year. Let’s see long how that lasts.
Thank you for your observations. Can you provide a rough geographic location, so that people can compare?
In an ideal world I would love to, but in this world I prefer strict anonymity. At least for now. I hope that’s okay. There are a lot of details beyond geographic location that I also restrict.
This is a line I drew for my own well-being after multiple encounters with unstable people IRL and on social media. It’s not worth the worry for me.
With that said, I encourage others to ask questions if they want more specifics on anything. I’ll either answer or explain why I don’t want to. I would also be comfortable comparing/contrasting in more detail if other users were participating in similar conversations.
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