Pictured is stewed tomato, salsa, spaghet sauce, tomato juice, marinara, ketchup, pickles, cranberries, gooseberry jam and ancient peaches from years gone. All sourced from a pretty modest sized garden. Not shown is sauerkraut and frozen corn

  • tty5@lemmy.worldEnglish
    251·
    7 months ago

    Be very very careful - it’s a slippery slope. My wife wanted “a small garden and maybe do some canning”. Fast forward 3 years:

    • I’ve turned 2000m² (1/2 acre) of a meadow into a garden
    • I’ve learned how to build basic wooden structures and I’ve built a greenhouse
    • we’ve harvested over 2000 kg (4400lbs) of vegetables this year
    • I’ve purchased jars by pallet load this year. Twice. All are full.
    • I’ve had to buy and assemble a lot of metal shelving to store it all
    • I now own a small (27hp) tractor

    And there I thought going into software development would keep my life largely free of manual labor…

      • tty5@lemmy.worldEnglish
        9·
        7 months ago

        Greenhouse could be easily classified as a software project:

        • it took 4 times longer than planned
        • it’s over budget
        • plans changed as it was being built
        • it’s more than was actually required
        • I was convinced it would be both cheaper and better if I built it
        • I had no experience building things remotely like this before deciding to build it
    • Milksteaks [he/him]@midwest.socialOPEnglish
      5·
      7 months ago

      That actually sounds pretty great! Unfortunately I dont have any land I rent a 15x15’ plot at a community garden, it’s a real small scale operation. The most I could do would to rent an extra plot, in which case I’d probably plant tubers for once.

      You know with that much harvested you could probably sell the extras at a farmers market or something. Also I cant imagine going through that much canned food in a year