[HN Gopher] Iowa teen grew 7k pounds of veggies, then gave them ...
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Iowa teen grew 7k pounds of veggies, then gave them all away
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 105 points
Date : 2023-11-15 17:03 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| darth_avocado wrote:
| > 7k pounds
|
| It's over 2 years, but nonetheless impressive yield on an acre of
| land. I wonder how it compares to the standard 1 acre lot for
| corn or soybeans.
| wiredfool wrote:
| Iowa averages about 200 bushels/acre for corn, and a bushel is
| 56 or 70 lbs. (depending on if it's kernel or cob).
|
| So, somewhat less than an intensive field crop, but the same
| order of magnitude.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Standard for corn with intensive agriculture is about 10000
| lbs/acre/year.
| ska wrote:
| That's perhaps a bit misleading though, because isn't it true
| that a big part of the reason corn has grown in use
| (particularly field corn) is _beacause_ you can push it to
| more density than most crops?
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >It's over 2 years, but nonetheless impressive yield on an acre
| of land.
|
| Iowa has the most fertile soil on earth:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernozem
|
| https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-iowa-town-famous-f...
| pixl97 wrote:
| Can confirm. From eastern Iowa myself and there are places on
| our farms that had 15 to 20 feet deep black soils in places
| on the farm. Some sections would grow corn stalks as tall as
| the combine.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| In dollars of value per acre, it's massive.
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| https://archive.md/84p6C
| ourmandave wrote:
| A few of my co-workers have gardens and around mid-season they'll
| bring in a bags and bags of vegetables they couldn't give away to
| friends and family.
|
| And it always seems to be squash and zucchini.
| zwieback wrote:
| We're (Oregon) drowning in Persimmons right now, and it also
| was a great apple year. I never grow zucchini or squash since
| my coworkers bully me to accept their excess every year.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| I have an unusually large amount of freezer space. What I
| have done in the past with zucchini and swiss chard (another
| vegetable I usually grow a lot of) is (for the zuccini) shred
| it, squeeze out as much water as I can, then freeze it and
| use it to bulk up stews/soups/congee-ish dishes through the
| winter with vegetable. A suprisingly large amount of it can
| disappear into a dish so that it reduces caloric density (if
| that's a thing you are trying to do) and making a tasty dish
| create more servings.
|
| For swiss chard, instead of the shred/squeeze step I just
| chop and cook before freezing.
|
| The larger point is that I have been slowly moving to the
| bulk of my garden space being dedicated to vegetables that
| can, in one way or another be preserved (canned, tried,
| fermented, frozen, or just straight up stored like winter
| squash, onions, and garlic), with only relatively small
| amounts being dedicated to things that _must_ be eaten fresh.
| el_benhameen wrote:
| I always thought of persimmons as a secret, special late-fall
| treat, and I had no idea how abundantly they grown until
| recently.
|
| A family member let us pick pounds of them from one of his
| trees because he can't get rid of them fast enough. I've been
| enjoying them diced with pumpkin seeds and manchego in
| salads, and even the very firm ones work great in the
| dehydrator, skin and all.
| josefresco wrote:
| Home vegetable gardeners are hilarious (my own family included)
|
| They're like "Hey I'm going to grow some vegetables this year".
|
| Then on a late summer day they're like: "So uhh yeah, I have a
| problem. Do you happen to need 47 pounds of squash?"
| lfowles wrote:
| Alternatively they get one single vegetable
| civilitty wrote:
| Especially if they've been planting in the same plot for
| years.
|
| Rotate your nightshades, people! If you keep planting
| tomatoes/potatoes/eggplants/etc in the same plot year after
| year, the Fusarium will build up and destroy your yield.
| jihadjihad wrote:
| I grew one zucchini plant this year, it took up about 15 sqft
| and produced squash for weeks. I like zucchini but when you get
| a plant or two that is just prolific, there's just only so many
| ways to cook it and only so much of it you can eat.
|
| My grandparents grew 30 tomato plants and had so many that even
| after canning over 100 quarts of tomato sauce they still
| couldn't keep up with all the tomatoes on the vines.
| potsandpans wrote:
| Idk, I see a lot of people here saying no one likes zucchini,
| or that it gets old fast -- but it's pretty versatile.
| Granted, it usually supplements other things. I personally
| could eat some version of summer veg nearly every day:
| kebobs, sauteed, baked. Straight zucchini fried or grilled or
| sauteed is also delicious. On top of that, there's zucchini
| bread, muffins and cakes. You can also pickle it.
| nathancahill wrote:
| I'm with you. Zucchini is the taste of summer for me. I eat
| so much of it, so many ways.
| Foobar8568 wrote:
| Tomato, eggplant, zucchini, the Mediterranean summer
| trio.
| pixl97 wrote:
| When I lived in a climate that was a little more moderate I'd
| grow just a few plants, maybe 8 at most, in raised beds with
| deep soil and even watering. With that I'd have more tomatoes
| than I could ever eat or give away. Well taken care of plants
| in a good climate are massive producers.
| timeon wrote:
| > My grandparents grew 30 tomato plants and had so many that
| even after canning over 100 quarts of tomato sauce they still
| couldn't keep up with all the tomatoes on the vines.
|
| Once canning is done I would dry the rest.
| mrob wrote:
| All squashes can be roasted and pureed like you would for
| making pumpkin pie, and then they can be divided into portions
| and frozen.
| jdmichal wrote:
| I mean, yes, you can... But summer squashes (zucchini, yellow
| squash, etc) and winter squashes (pumpkin, butternut, acorn,
| spaghetti, etc) are not the same. And it's usually the former
| that home gardeners are trying to foist off on others.
| harryquach wrote:
| Seems the logical conclusion is to learn preservation
| techniques
| 317070 wrote:
| How many pounds of veggies would a person eat per year? How many
| would they need to sustain themselves?
| ericmcer wrote:
| Can you sustain yourself eating only vegetables? Modern vegan
| diets work because we have heavily processed oils and grains,
| and a variety of supplements. I don't think a human could live
| long just munching vegetables that aren't cooked with oil.
| ska wrote:
| Historically there have been similar diets for ages before
| there were modern supplements (as we think of them), and per-
| industrialized seed/olive oils etc. I don't know how
| effective or ineffective they were relative to other
| contemporary diets.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| There are cultures across the world that are vegetarian or
| almost-vegans. For instance, Jainism [1] is a thousands of
| years old religion in India, and they are dairy-only
| vegetarians. Obviously, for most of its history, adherents
| ate only food that was locally grown.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jain_vegetarianism
| dundarious wrote:
| There are/were groups eating near-vegan diets for non-
| ideological reasons also. For example, the pre-modern
| Okinawan diet was mostly vegetables, some grains and soy
| products, and very little (~2%) meat (including seafood).
| No dairy or oils, AFAIK. And those eating that way are/were
| a notably healthy population.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| > some grains and soy products
|
| So, to the ancestor's point: Not just vegetables, but
| higher caloric-density grains.
| lgkk wrote:
| I'm a vegan Hindu person. I do take a multi vitamin, but
| I'm not a body builder and not an athlete. I get maybe 100g
| protein a day which I think is fine. I eat dal daily for
| lunch and dinner is usually something fun with veggies like
| chili or tofu or curries etc. I also drink a loaded
| smoothie that's got fruits and herbs and nuts and oats. Got
| enough energy to go up any hill in SF and not feel
| exhausted lol.
|
| Honestly feels great and my blood test comes back okay each
| time.
|
| The only issue is when I'm away from home my options is
| basically Chipotle.
| ArchOversight wrote:
| The only supplement you can't get from a vegan diet is B12,
| because farming is too clean (it is in dirt, and eating dirt
| is how you'd get the B12 needed). Everything else you can get
| from eating plant based products.
|
| You do not need heavily processed oils and grains nor do you
| need a variety of supplements. Beans and Rice contain all of
| the necessary proteins a human body needs for example.
|
| B12 deficiency is an issue even for people that eat meat due
| to the cleaner practices and feeding where animals no longer
| graze but instead get their food delivered in a way that
| doesn't allow the animals to ingest the B12 from the dirt.
|
| You can absolutely survive eating food that is not cooked
| with oil.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| So what you're saying is we can live off the land and Red
| Bull?
| orangepurple wrote:
| We just need some cows to eat the vegan diet for us to
| digest and unlock these difficult to obtain nutrients.
| Then we can eat them to get the nutrients.
| klyrs wrote:
| Nutritional yeast is a great source of B12. Also, it's a
| delicious addition to a great many recipes. I learned about
| it from a vegan, but I'm an omnivore.
| mrob wrote:
| Depends on the brand. Yeast does not naturally produce
| B12, but many brands of nutritional yeast are fortified
| with B12.
| ericmcer wrote:
| Rice is not a vegetable, the question was if you can live
| off vegetables. Thats why I said you would struggle to hit
| your caloric needs without processed grains and oils.
|
| You could maybe make it if you ate a couple pounds of beans
| a day with dirt on them. I really think your digestive
| tract would struggle though.
| mastazi wrote:
| So you are saying that vegetable oil is not a vegetable?
| How come that rice, which comes from a plant, is not a
| vegetable? I'm struggling to understand where you are
| drawing the line. Reminds me of those debates on whether
| tomatoes are fruits or vegetables (the answer to that
| question is "yes").
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| There are a lot of disagreements on definition of the
| word "vegetable" [1]. But it seems like the OP is asking
| about the most conservative definition.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetable
| timeon wrote:
| Yes but vegan diet (mentioned in this thread) is not
| about eating 'vegetables'. Just not eating from kingdom
| Animalia.
| panzagl wrote:
| It's funny that the other answers to your question are all
| trying to say 'yes', but are really saying 'no'.
| chihuahua wrote:
| It's because everyone misunderstands the comment they are
| responding to, and it is indeed funny and strange.
|
| The comment talks about eating "only vegetables", but it's
| being misinterpreted as "can you survive on a vegan diet"
| and even "do vegetarians exist"
|
| The question was "can you survive eating only vegetables?"
| No beans, chickpeas, peanuts, no nuts, no grains, no fruit.
| sophacles wrote:
| Which is a really really weird limiting factor. The
| dictionary definition of "vegetable" is:
|
| (according to oxford):
|
| a plant or part of a plant used as food
|
| (according to webster):
|
| a usually herbaceous plant (such as the cabbage, bean, or
| potato) grown for an edible part that is usually eaten as
| part of a meal
|
| (according to dictionary.com)
|
| any plant whose fruit, seeds, roots, tubers, bulbs,
| stems, leaves, or flower parts are used as food
|
| Which should include beans, chickpeas, peanuts, nuts,
| fruit, grains, etc.
|
| If the question was about something else, maybe they
| should have used the words that mean what they want to
| ask instead?
| sophacles wrote:
| How do you define vegetable here? A whole lot of
| (dis)agreement below seems to hinge on that.
|
| The dictionary definition of vegetable (according to
| dictionary.com) is:
|
| > any plant whose fruit, seeds, roots, tubers, bulbs, stems,
| leaves, or flower parts are used as food
|
| Which would include grains, however you may be excluding
| those depending on if "heavily processed" modifies only the
| oil, or the grains as well.
|
| Of course culinarily in western traditions, grains and a lot
| of tubers are excluded from that, as are some fruits (others,
| culinarily speaking, are considered vegetables like squashes,
| tomatoes, and so on).
|
| Also, in your question, would olive oil count? Its literally
| the result of squishing olives.... does that count as heavily
| processed?
|
| Do you count potatoes? They are pretty calorie dense. Beans?
| Plenty of calories and lots of protein.
|
| What about seed foods - nuts and such? They are also calorie
| dense and have a lot of fats too.
|
| Point being - it's really unclear what limitations you're
| placing on it... peanuts, beans, (sweet) potatoes, squashes
| and fruits are commonly grown in home gardens, widely
| considered vegetables, and calorie dense enough to sustain a
| person fairly easily without non-stop eating.
| talldatethrow wrote:
| I've juiced Vegetables for 90 days as a
| diet/cleanse/experiment.
|
| Juicing 10 lbs of vegetables a day still causes you to lose
| weight, but that's at a mix of sugary and non sugary
| vegetables. I think if you did beets, carrots, apples, 10 lbs a
| day would be enough for an adult male to have good energy and
| not lose weight.
|
| So around 3000 lbs a year considering women would need less.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Here they recommend about 365... Or half a kilo a day...
| temp0826 wrote:
| Kilopounds might be my new favorite unit (though libraries of
| congress will always hold a special place in my heart).
| unixhero wrote:
| I for one think kilograms make sense. You know the, uhm, metric
| system.
|
| Not very salty about this. This is just an Internet comment.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I've never had trouble converting between different measuring
| systems, why do metric folks complain constantly about it?
| zach_miller wrote:
| They can empathize with others.
| zdragnar wrote:
| On that note, learning other languages is too hard.
| Everyone should just speak what I do.
| elliottkember wrote:
| I think at this point, "metric folks" are the majority and
| "imperial folks" are the stubborn minority
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Sure. But it's the constant bitching about it. We know,
| we know, you [metaphorically, not you personally
| necessarily] like metric better. The US uses metric for
| all kinds of things, in fact! And the UK still uses
| imperial for some things. Conversions are not hard, and
| hearing people bitch about it in every thread is tedious.
| jorvi wrote:
| Aside from some internet memery, no one cares too much if
| you use metric _or_ imperial, but mixing the two is a
| special kind of accursed.
|
| Metric _is_ more clean. Example: you have a cube of 1
| meter, filled halfway with water. You can calculate the
| volume of water as being 1 * 1 * 0.5 cubic meter. 1 cubic
| meter is 1000 liter (ho ho, the magic already manifests),
| so 0.5 cubic meter is 500 liter. I even know the
| approximate weight is 500kg, as 1 liter of water [?] 1
| kilo.
|
| Doing this in cubic yards/feet + fluidic ounce + pounds
| is not even in the same universe in terms of elegance or
| ease-of-use. Swapping the fluidic ounce to liter does not
| solve that and probably introduces whackier ratios.
|
| That does not mean you are a bad person for using
| imperial, but stating that "its easy to convert" isn't
| wholly fair either.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| quite relevant essay: stubbornness as a minority is power
| https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-
| dict...
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| Part of the marketing strategy in getting the U.S. and
| other minorities to adopt the metric system has been to
| attach a morality component to it, which results in any
| dissent being met with shaming and emotional appeals, as
| the morality component supersedes the logical component.
| amacneil wrote:
| Speaking as someone who grew up with the metric system
| before moving to America: Because growing up, we never had
| to convert between different measuring systems.
|
| Everything was easy to do in your head:
|
| 5cm + 15cm = 20cm
|
| 0.5kg + 0.15kg = 0.65kg
|
| 2900mm / 2 = 1450mm.
|
| Now I'm forced to do mental gymnastics like:
|
| 5/8" + 7/16" = ???
|
| 2'9 1/4" + 14" = ???
|
| 11'4"1/4 / 2 = ???
|
| 1lb9oz / 2 = ???
|
| It's not impossible, but it takes me a lot more time to
| think through these things, and often they are impossible
| to even punch into a calculator. Adding fractions of an
| inch in my head was not something I learned in school
| (honestly, my experience since moving to the US is that
| most adult Americans also struggle to add fractions of an
| inch).
| rootusrootus wrote:
| There's give and take. A unit based on 1/12th makes one
| third, one half, and one quarter all even divisions.
|
| It's just not that big a deal in my experience. And if I
| want to use millimeters, every ruler and tape measure has
| those too. For all the bitching about the US not using
| metric, we in fact use it for many things. But it's
| customary to use imperial for discussion, and I don't get
| why that hurts people's feelings. I don't care about the
| UK weighing people in stones...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| This was one consequence:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Yeah, ability to employ both systems and translate
| between them is quite useful. It might be similar to
| native bilingualism.
|
| Even outside of the legacy imperial unit systems, there
| will always be units not nicely expressed in metric units
| that are handy nevertheless and good to know and use.
| Like electron-volts.
| kzrdude wrote:
| Now that you're mentioning that, why doesn't the default
| calculator app on a phone have prominent functionality
| for that, it's so useful in everyday life.
| crandycodes wrote:
| "Converting between units is a useful skill" - is it
| intrinsically useful or just useful because we are forced
| to do it with the status quo?
| xorbax wrote:
| Is anything intrinsically useful? Or _intrinsically_
| anything, for that matter?
| unixhero wrote:
| The reason is that as a physicist I was taught the SI
| system, which is a superset of the metric system both
| completely logical.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| The fussy American units help our mental acuity - constant
| brain training in everyday life. Metric is too easy, makes
| you soft!
| animex wrote:
| We've only lost a couple spacecraft to metric/imperial
| conversions! What's a few hundred million here or
| there...
| rootusrootus wrote:
| It's easy enough to skip on the exercise if you wish. All
| my measuring tools support metric right next to imperial.
| All the food on the shelf at the market is measured both
| ways. I can live a metric life if I want to.
| erikerikson wrote:
| So _YOU 'RE_ one of those slow drivers on the highway
| causing traffic and making everyone unsafe! ;)
| thrownblown wrote:
| time is base 12 or 60, ounces are base 16, feet back to
| 12, but miles are base 5,280
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Be fair: the mile is either base 8 (furlongs) or base
| 1000 (paces). 5280 is an arbitrary complication.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| On the contrary, as a stupid American, I'm grateful for
| the imperial system because it doesn't require much
| thinking at all.
|
| The intuitiveness of the imperial units actually don't
| demand much thinking from my American pea brain: an inch
| is about the width of my thumb, a pound is about the
| weight of how much meat/grain I can fit in my hands, a
| mile is about a thousand paces - it's actually quite
| simple and intuitive, which is perfect for a dumb stupid
| American like me.
|
| I can't imagine doing something like woodworking without
| my brainlet system. Inches are a nice "bite-size" unit
| that fractionates quite nicely for cutting wood. They
| don't make me think too much. In metric, my thumb would
| be about 2.53 centimeters, the kerf of my saw is 1/8 an
| inch, and that's like 253/800cm as a fraction - yikes! An
| inch is a good whole number to start working from.
|
| And then like - what's a centimeter even? It's one
| hundredth of one ten-millionth of the distance between
| the North Pole and the Equator passing through Paris.
| Woah - get me outta here! That's just too much numerology
| for me. And my brain can't relate to or conceptualize
| that. Again, because I'm just so stupid, and American. I
| have to stick to the simple stuff: thumb -> inch, pound
| -> fits in my hands, mile -> thousand paces, gallon -> 10
| pounds of water.
| happymellon wrote:
| > And then like - what's a centimeter even?
|
| About the thickness of your pinkie.
|
| A kilo is about 1/2 a lb so it's not really wildly
| different.
|
| > pound -> fits in my hands
|
| > gallon -> 10 pounds of water.
|
| How do you do 10 handfuls of water?
| xorbax wrote:
| It's so intuitive he does it naturally
|
| Not like that arrogant metric, for which he can find no
| useful representation...for some reason
|
| A reason that is clearly about the utility of metric
| itself rather than one's constant use of imperial.
| unwind wrote:
| Uh, you meant that a pound is about 1/2 kg, not the other
| way around.
| jdeisenberg wrote:
| A gallon of water weighs 8.3 pounds, so your estimate of
| 10 pounds is about 20% too high. To add to what someone
| else posted in terms of metric to "intutive"
| equivalences, 1 km is about 600 paces (for me, it's also
| the distance from my house to the Asian market)
|
| People living in metric countries have these sorts of
| "intuitive" relationships figured out. If you ever go to
| Europe, you will not see people anxiously furrowing their
| brows over their calculators to figure out how much
| things weigh or how far it is to the end of the block.
|
| And, of course, there's an XKCD for that:
| https://xkcd.com/526/
| koolba wrote:
| Sure you can use metric, but only if you're going to be
| reporting something like the number of kg of individuals
| covered by universal healthcare. Otherwise it's best to stick
| to freedom units.
| nickpeterson wrote:
| Soldier: "But what will a thousand pounds be called General
| Washington?"
|
| Washington: "Nothing"
| Ekaros wrote:
| Wouldn't short tons be much more customary? So 3.5 short tons.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| I had to look that up, I had no idea there was such a thing
| as a ton that isn't 1000 kg.
| wiredfool wrote:
| Ah yes, the kip.
|
| Confused the hell out of me when I went from nice clean metric
| units in school to a structural engineering practice still
| using Us standard units.
| twic wrote:
| And this plot's area is about 390 nanowaleses.
| mhb wrote:
| George Washington said no to the kilopound:
| https://youtu.be/JYqfVE-fykk?si=GaKxqs-iV89PXUfV
| orangepurple wrote:
| American wire gauge is better. They defined zero as 8.251 mm
| diameter so for thicker wires they had to use multiple zeros.
| And for some reason many Americans write it as (1/0) which
| looks like one divided by zero. And its pronounced "one aught."
| It also has no resemblence to barrel gauge for firearms even
| though they follow a similar principle of increasing gauge
| leading to decreasing diameter. For example a 12 gauge shotgun
| barrel is much larger than a zero gauge wire. Interestingly
| firearm gauges never hit zero. Total disaster.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_wire_gauge
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauge_(firearms)
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I don't know where you live, but where I am, the various food
| banks compete to pick up unsellable groceries from the stores and
| then give them away to whomever asks. "Unsellable" often means "a
| day or more old."
|
| Might be different in Iowa.
| ozfive wrote:
| I was going to grow a bunch of hydroponic greens (spinach,
| lettuces) and donate them to the local food bank in the Seattle
| area. It would have been 284 plants at a time. I talked to them
| about it and they said they couldn't take it because they
| couldn't store it. I was like, it's hydroponic and I can just
| cut it on the days you distribute and that would work. They
| still refused and only wanted to give out dry and canned food.
| I was disgusted.
| wiredfool wrote:
| The whidbey food bank has a large garden that they use to
| supplement the shelf stable food they give out.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I've visited the "store" where they give away food. It's a
| former liquor store, so it has a whole wall of fridges.
|
| They can do meat, milk, and produce.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| I don't think you should fault the food bank. They have
| limited space, labor, and money.
|
| You were asking them to take on a labor and space intensive
| project they didn't ask for, that might require additional
| food production safety training to maintain legal compliance.
| Do they have enough fridge space? Do they have access to a
| commissary kitchen to process it? Do their customers want it?
|
| If you offered them ready to distribute bags of veg from your
| plants I'm guessing they might take it.
|
| Charities often run into this problem of someone offering
| something they didn't ask for or need, and having to deal
| with it.
|
| Externally it can seem like an obvious thing: of course the
| food bank wants greens!
|
| Internally it looks more like: this guy wants to give us an
| indeterminate amount of his garden veggies, which we might
| have to process, and aren't produced in a facility that we
| can guaranty is safe. we normally only accept donations of
| dry and canned goods and source our own fresh food for these
| reasons. Is it worth our time to make an exception?
| dghughes wrote:
| The fast growing and never ending vegetables seem to be the ones
| people don't like. Zucchini/courgette, squash, spinach I have
| piles of it but people don't want it not even friends and family.
| Root vegetables are not spurned as much things like carrots,
| potatoes, beets then again beets seem to be not as popular.
|
| The problem with a home garden is you usually have nothing, then
| a few things, then inundated with too much.
|
| I bet even now at a temp of 1C if I look there is a sneaky
| zucchini hiding under a leaf! One year spinach survived the
| winter (-20C ish and 1m snow) and popped up in April.
| Centigonal wrote:
| You're so right about home gardens creating these brief windows
| of abundance, and then nothing.
|
| Getting into gardening helped me understand how big of a role
| fermentation, drying, and canning played in our lived up until
| the spread of refrigeration.
|
| Also, for stuff like lettuce, you can plant several series of
| seeds a week or two apart to get a "conveyor belt" of product
| instead of a bit glut if your season is long enough- but it is
| a lot of effort.
| jdmichal wrote:
| Different cultivars that grow and yield at different rates
| can help some too.
| Loughla wrote:
| My favorite preservation item is dill pickled green beans.
| They keep their snap, and are DELICIOUS. Let's not think too
| much about the sodium content.
| sophacles wrote:
| A little planning can help with this.
|
| If you do your own starts, you can do what I do with peppers:
|
| * overwinter a few plants in containers, they'll be ready
| quickly when you put htem back out just after last freeze.
|
| * start some plants in mid jan, some in mid feb, and some in
| mid march, to fewer are ready at various times. Of course
| peppers will produce fruits over an extended period.
|
| Tomatoes are similar, and you can also use vining varietals
| that produce fewer tomatoes continuously (rather than all at
| once).
|
| For a lot of leafy plants (spinach, leaf lettuces) i plant
| them in with my bigger plants - they'll be done by the time
| the other plants are big enough to crowd/shade them out.
|
| A lot of plants come out in mid to late summer. If your
| climate allows it, you can plant brassicas (like broccoli)
| when you pull those out an they'll thrive in the cool fall
| weather.
|
| As another commenter mentioned, various cultivars can have
| different timings.
|
| All of this is a little bit of extra work in the garden, and
| quite a bit more planning (but I like that part, and after a
| bit of practice it's not that much effort either, I'll do it
| over a few evenings in January. It helps to have other
| gardening friends over for dinner and garden planning/seed
| buying - more fun and less like work). The result is an
| extended period of available produce without as much of a
| "glut" at peak.
|
| It annoys me to no end that a lot of garden plants are still
| designed around the home garden being a mini-farm rather than
| a continuing source of fresh produce. This made a lot more
| sense 100 years ago, but these days it seems counter-
| productive, most people don't grow gardens to preserve food
| over the winter, but rather to have fresh veggies while
| enjoying gardening (and maybe to cut out the produce bill in
| the summer)
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| Or, you can grow tomatoes, watch birds peck a single
| @#$%^@#$%^@$%^& bite out of each @#$^@#$%^$%^& one, despite any
| netting, fencing or anything else short of an enclosed green
| house, throw your hands up in disgust and never touch dirt
| again.
|
| It's not for everyone, but it certainly worked in my case. ;)
| klyrs wrote:
| My mom uses unmatched socks to protect her figs from the
| infernal starlings.
| 6510 wrote:
| You wouldn't want the one with a bite out of it either?
|
| My version was 40 broccoli vs thousands of slugs. Apparently
| they smell it from as far as they can travel in a life time.
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| With slugs, at least you can stomp a few of them into paste
| and gain a pyrrhic victory. Birds? You're the old man and
| his son in that Simpsons episode shaking your fist at the
| sky, upset because you can't shake harder.
|
| That being said, 1000s of slugs is practically
| insurmountable unless you plan to salt the Earth
| (figurately and literally) or kill the entire neighborhood
| with fire. Both have...consequences beyond the initial
| issue. ;)
| Loughla wrote:
| Beer is the best slug killer. A little in the bottom of a
| plastic dish, and they'll drink themselves to death.
|
| It saved our broccoli and cabbage.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| This is me with an apple tree and worms. I just accepted that
| there will be at least one worm/bee/parasite in each apple,
| so I eat around it and throw the remainder to the horses.
| miah_ wrote:
| Squash & Zucchini are amazing in so many recipes. Want a quick
| curry? Squash + veggies + spices & rice. Want to thicken up a
| big soup? Add zucchini and let it cook down into nothing but
| added flavor and thickness.
|
| And if you want to go another route, you can make any vegetable
| into wine.
|
| I blame cheap carbs and lack of education around cooking; we
| need to bring back Home Economics classes and teach the new
| generation.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Noodles made from zucchini are delicious. Highly recommend.
| justrealist wrote:
| Zucchini is great but it's kind of hard to eat 1 zucchini a
| day for 4 months straight (the consequence of growing a
| single plant).
| miah_ wrote:
| If you're just eating it sure, but throwing it into some
| chili, or stew you'll hardly notice it.
| jaeckel wrote:
| Or chocolate cake
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| 1 zucchini is nothing. It shrinks a lot when fried for a
| while.
| scottlamb wrote:
| No kidding. They are 95% water. (Actual figure.)
| ingenieros wrote:
| Then eat the blossoms before they turn into actual
| zucchinis. Mexicans have enough recipes to keep you busy
| for 4 months straight.
| kulahan wrote:
| I've been very interested in the food industry, and I think the
| reason for this is multi-faceted.
|
| First, a lot of English-speaking countries place lower
| importance on veggies. We got calcium from milk and cheese, so
| we didn't need to learn how to cook well with lots of dark
| leafy greens, as an example.
|
| Second, European meals tend to focus heavily on a main and some
| side dishes, but a TON of countries simply do one dish for the
| whole meal. You're not trying to think of ways to cook squash,
| because the dinner _is_ squash.
|
| Finally (there are more, but I don't want to get too crazy in
| the comments), European cooking tends to focus more on using a
| wide variety of ingredients. In contrast, you'll find a lot of
| SE Asian cooking uses many of the same ingredients, but they
| prepare the food in _vastly_ different ways, leading to some
| completely different dishes. This means that they naturally
| have a huge repertoire of ways to modify their veggies to fit
| any meal.
|
| I have no real point, I just never get to talk about this stuff
| and I find it really interesting. If I was wrong about
| anything, please correct me below.
| reactordev wrote:
| >"focus heavily on a main and some side dishes"
|
| Because traditionally they were served "courses". However,
| it's all biryani in the belly. I think the old ways of
| serving a main with sides is still a tip to that era when it
| was plated separately. I'm ok with having it all mixed
| together so long as the flavors complement. I don't want a
| steak, cubed, mixed with my veggies and mashed potatoes, all
| in a bowl. Some things should be separate, some things are ok
| being together/combined. Western style cooking has been
| dominated by French Cuisine and traditional Countryside
| cooking. Only within the last 30-50 years have they started
| branching out into Asian or South American dishes.
|
| Its way more approachable today than it ever has been with
| YouTube videos, online blog recipes, availability of
| supplies.
| hammock wrote:
| >I'm ok with having it all mixed together so long as the
| flavors complement. I don't want a steak, cubed, mixed with
| my veggies and mashed potatoes, all in a bowl.
|
| Huh? They don't complement??
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepherd%27s_pie
| reactordev wrote:
| You win the prize for readership. Yes, shepherds pie was
| exactly what I was referring to. You can keep your meat
| pie.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| On the green leafy veggies - my mom cooks like 7/8 different
| varieties in as many different way. Each green tastes
| different and they're cooked differently. The closest
| equivalent to spinach for example is steamed and made into a
| soup. I could just eat rice and that - even as a kid. There's
| one that's bitter and it's cooked with a lentil. It actually
| tastes good. Another one that's sour and is added to a spicy
| curry. And so on. (But afaik none of these are available any
| more)
| JohnFen wrote:
| > a TON of countries simply do one dish for the whole meal.
| You're not trying to think of ways to cook squash, because
| the dinner is squash.
|
| But even if the dinner is squash, you still want to think of
| different ways to prepare it, don't you?
|
| This is how I, in the US, was fed while growing, and is how I
| do things to this day. I didn't realize that there was a
| cultural variation on this (or that my habit wasn't the
| common case in my own culture!)
|
| Today I learned...
| el_benhameen wrote:
| I don't have anything to add right now, but I found this to
| be very insightful and not at all too crazy. Thanks for
| posting.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _but a TON of countries simply do one dish for the whole
| meal_
|
| Can you provide some examples? I can't think of any.
|
| It's not Latin/South American, it's not European, it's not
| Chinese, it's not Japanese, it's not like anywhere I've been
| in Africa, and it doesn't match my knowledge of India or the
| Middle East.
|
| Nor can I imagine any country where "dinner is squash" makes
| much sense. Squash has almost no calories, so it doesn't make
| a lot of sense to center a meal on.
|
| Cuisines often have _occasional_ meals that are complete
| enough to be eaten as a single dish -- some kind of protein-
| mixed-in-with-carbs like lasagna or paella or chicken
| stroganoff. But these seem to be exceptions in the cuisine,
| rather than the rule.
|
| Could you elaborate with some specific countries where the
| one-dish pattern is the norm?
| bigtunacan wrote:
| Not parent, but as an example zucchini boats are pretty
| popular in my area of the Midwest as are stuffed peppers.
|
| A zucchini boat is basically just zucchini stuffed with
| meat, cheese, tomato, onions, and spices. That's the whole
| meal. Stuffed peppers is basically the same thing, but with
| peppers instead of zucchini.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Oh for sure. I guess I think of both of those as being
| ground beef dishes rather than zucchini/pepper dishes.
| They're kind of like hamburgers but swapping out the bun
| for a vegetable. Maybe it depends on your ratios?
| Tao3300 wrote:
| Who doesn't like squash? It's like the meat of vegetables.
| lgkk wrote:
| All those are fine vegetables. I especially love squash. Can
| make soups, curries, and pie with it.
| fodkodrasz wrote:
| Ferment them to give them richer flavour, improve their
| digestibility, and to extend their shelf life.
|
| There are lots of resources available on lacto-fermentation,
| but basically you need some clean jars, salt, and clean water,
| plus some spices. Fermented vegetables do not spoil for many
| months, and are great soup bases for cream soups.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Seriously? Who doesn't like spinach and zucchini??? Spinach is
| really good wilted in a pan of olive oil that's been infused
| with garlic and red pepper flakes.
|
| Zucchini is great steamed with yellow squash and vidalia onions
| and seasoned with fresh pepper.
| el_benhameen wrote:
| I love zucchini, and one of my kids enjoys it, but my wife
| and other kid quite dislike it. The texture, apparently
| regardless of how it's prepared, is the issue for them more
| than the taste. I've tried firmer (grilled) and softer
| (steamed) preparations but have received the same feedback,
| so it's something innate to the fruit. To each their own.
| SushiHippie wrote:
| Have you tried zucchini "spaghetti" salad?
|
| Basically there are these cutters which cut the zucchini
| (raw) into very long "noodles". I think they are sometimes
| called "zoodles".
|
| With these "noodles" you can do anything you like. But I've
| only tried it as a salad. i.e. add oil, salt, pepper and
| whatever you like, mix it, and enjoy.
| supertofu wrote:
| I just discovered some parisian carrots in my garden months
| after my last harvest!! Hardy little guys.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I don't disagree, but "too much" isn't really a thing. The
| trick there is understanding long duration storage preparation
| options. Zucchini for example can be incorporated into an
| excellent relish, tomatoes into a number of sauces, carrots and
| onions and leeks into soups. All of these things you can 'can'
| (put up on the shelf through the process of canning) and they
| will continue to be tasty for months, even years later.
| scottlamb wrote:
| > Zucchini/courgette, squash, spinach I have piles of it but
| people don't want it not even friends and family.
|
| I used to hate zucchini. But then I started eating lower carb
| and found ways to enjoy it. A few simple tips made a big
| difference:
|
| * Add lots of sodium. Not necessarily pure table salt; fish
| sauce or Better than Bouillon are really nice. These vegetables
| have very very little salt on their own. The mainstream public
| health advice still seems to be that Americans eat too much
| salt, but (a) I probably was eating less than most, and (b) the
| advice may be wrong for most people, and (c) it may be
| particularly wrong when eating low-carb and/or particularly
| active (I exercise about 1 hour per day).
| <https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/keto/supplements#sodium>
| has a nice section about this with references.
|
| * Sautee chopped veggies (zucchini, eggplant, cabbage,
| whatever), again with sodium. Then make it into a shakshuka-
| esque dish (add canned tomato, spices, and egg then broil;
| maybe also cheese or canned fish) or add in some ground
| meat/sausage + cheese + spices + low-sugar ketchup + mustard. I
| use my cast iron skillet a lot now.
|
| * Spiralize; use as pasta noodles with a thick sauce.
|
| * Use neutral veggie puree to replace the bulk of sugar in
| baked desserts, combining with concentrated liquid sweetener
| (sucralose, stevia, monkfruit). Requires some recipe tweaks
| because you're replacing a dry ingredient with a wet one but I
| had pumpkin almond butter mousse brownies today that were good.
|
| I eat lots of dark leafy greens too. I often steam them in a
| Pyrex in the microwave then enclose in cheesecloth and squeeze
| the water out with tongs. Salt and pepper, throw into almost
| any savory dish, use as a base for a modified juevos rancheros,
| etc.
| hammock wrote:
| >I eat lots of dark leafy greens too. I often steam them in a
| Pyrex in the microwave then enclose in cheesecloth and
| squeeze the water out with tongs
|
| Takes longer to prepare but if you bake them in the oven
| you'll get a similar result but won't lose all those
| nutrients in the water
|
| Side note - you really are a maverick kind of cook lol
| scottlamb wrote:
| > Takes longer to prepare but if you bake them in the oven
| you'll get a similar result but won't lose all those
| nutrients in the water
|
| Interesting point! I wonder how much I am losing.
|
| > Side note - you really are a maverick kind of cook lol
|
| I choose to take that as a compliment. :-)
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| I don't know squat about growing vegetables and my girlfriend
| wanted to plant a garden. I planted about 20 radish plants. In
| 2 weeks we had enough radish to supply the neighborhood for the
| entire summer.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Not overthinking it is a good first step.
|
| I call my garden the "lucky garden" because only what
| survives my abuse and neglect survives.
|
| Still end up with tons of tomatoes (from like mid-June and
| still eating the last to ripen indoors now), kale, peppers,
| parsley, basil, random squash & zucchini.
|
| It's all about yield/effort for me.
| timeon wrote:
| > The fast growing and never ending vegetables seem to be the
| ones people don't like. Zucchini/courgette, squash, spinach I
| have piles of it but people don't want it
|
| TIL. I was under impression that Zucchini and spinach are
| popular. At least in stores it seems like they are selling
| quickly. Sure if Zucchini is big one no-one wants to eat it but
| small ones?
| metadat wrote:
| > One year spinach survived the winter (-20C ish and 1m snow)
| and popped up in April.
|
| That's literally wild, haha. Was it still edible?
| TeeMassive wrote:
| Hopefully she won't get charged by the FDA
| Bud wrote:
| The way to go: basil. You never have too much basil! And if you
| somehow manage to, a couple nice batches of pesto can use up
| basically any quantity of basil, the pesto can be frozen and
| keeps forever, and it's radically better than store-bought.
|
| I also recommend cherry tomatoes. More snackable, easier to use
| them up.
| timeon wrote:
| > You never have too much basil
|
| If you harvest the tips then harvests grow with geometric
| progression.
| hammock wrote:
| In shape, yes, but not in weight per time (that is somewhere
| between quadratic and linear)
| mbfg wrote:
| was expecting a, "..... and was brought up on charges." at the
| end.
| justin_oaks wrote:
| Sad but true. It's hard to find much positivity in news these
| days.
|
| That's one of the reasons I like tech news. We have some
| positivity in the form of "Check out this cool new tool!" or "I
| did this weird thing with a 1,000 Rasberry Pi units." Tech news
| can be educational and entertaining without reporting on
| everything awful in the world, though there's some of that too.
| drewcoo wrote:
| > "Not only is she helping our mission of ending hunger,
|
| Actually, relying on charitable teenagers to solve large systemic
| problems doesn't seem much like "helping."
|
| Nor do articles like these.
|
| They just paper over the problems to maintain the status quo.
| justrealist wrote:
| It helps infinitely more than your negative comment does.
| User23 wrote:
| This is really neat. I wonder why she doesn't irrigate with drip
| tape though.
| wormius wrote:
| "Guess what this 'genius for a day' did..."
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vudnMLzZjTg
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