• Letstakealook@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    Growing garlic is more than just planting it. You have to keep trimming it so the additional cloves will form. After harvesting, you need to hang it in an airy dry place to cure for about two weeks. This allows the allicin to concentrate and the papery protective skin to form around the bulb. All this to say, you’re probably better off buying garlic, as it is cheap, and growing something else.

      • Letstakealook@lemm.ee
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        1 month ago

        For sure. A good place to start is a “salsa garden.” Tomatoes, onions, and jalapeños (or another pepper). Super easy, tasty, and versatile.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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        1 month ago

        And mint. In fact, getting mint to stop growing is a bigger problem. My grandmother grew mint in her garden in a kitchen sink she buried in the ground so it wouldn’t escape.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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            1 month ago

            Bamboo is actually illegal in the city where my mom lives. She has some in a brick box along one of the borders of her house that were planted back before she bought the place and before the law, and a city inspector had to come out and make sure it was safe to grandfather them in. Which it is because the box would have to break for them to escape.

        • Mîm@lemmy.zip
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          1 month ago

          I have it hanging on the balkony in a flower tub. Great for tea in the summer.

      • nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 month ago

        Chives grow like weeds and whenever you need some just go out in the yard with scissors and give them a haircut. They grow back in a week or two, unless they’re under a foot or two of snow 6 months of the year. Which is where my farming desires end.

    • Anti-Antidote@lemmy.zip
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      1 month ago

      You only have to cut the scapes once per season (and it doesn’t cause additional cloves to form, it just makes the existing ones bigger since it’s not putting energy into trying to flower). Growing hard neck garlic is easy and you get awesome garlic out of it, way better than lame ass grocery store soft neck garlic with a million cloves the size of a grain of sand (obvious hyperbole but still). Plus garlic scapes are delicious stir fried.

  • TachyonTele@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    Sadly there absolutely are people that think food is just made and appears at the grocery store.

    • IndiBrony@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Heard this argument a few weeks ago which stunned me. This woman was being interviewed about her thoughts regarding nearby farm land being used to build new homes. She retorted along the lines of: “I don’t see why we need all this farm land anyway, you can buy your food from the store!”

      I died a little hearing that.

      • TachyonTele@lemm.ee
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        1 month ago

        Exactly. A lot of people are completely ignorant about how the world works. They just expect everything to function, without any idea of how or why. Full blown adults.

        It’s disheartening.

      • sundray@lemmus.org
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        1 month ago

        Growing up in a rural area, my school taught us that farmers were basically god.

          • sundray@lemmus.org
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            1 month ago

            I can’t find their website right now, but there’s a charity that “borrows” suburban yards to grow produce which they then donate to local food banks. It sounds pretty cool.

    • IninewCrow
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      1 month ago

      It is a frightening realization that our world hinges on a very thin tether of human cooperation that allows us to create a civilization where food is delivered daily to everyone everywhere all the time.

      As soon as that system is disrupted, or destroyed … people automatically start starving.

      If something terrible happens right now and transportation stops … there is only enough fresh food in any town for 24 hours … 72 hours to empty them all of everything else that is edible. What most people don’t realize is that modern grocery stores are stocked just for a day or two with the expectation that deliveries will happen on a daily basis. So grocery stores don’t have any extra once supplies are gone. They don’t have surplus in the back to restock everything. Even as it all starts, we will probably start fighting, murdering one another for food supplies once we realize no more is coming.

      It’s really hard to build a civilization from nothing … but it’s far too easy to take a civilization down.

      “From barbarism to civilization requires a century; from civilization to barbarism needs but a day.” - Will Durant

      • Barbarian@sh.itjust.works
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        1 month ago

        It’s actually worse than that. Starvation takes a long time to happen (~3 weeks). Lack of access to water causes death and desperation in a much shorter period of time. If water pipelines and/or pumping facilities get screwed up in any way, cities will become mad max much faster and in a much more intense fashion. In a water-starved population, people are mostly composed of water…

        • IninewCrow
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          1 month ago

          Correct … I’m Indigenous and my parents were born in the 1930s and 1940s and they lived through famine up here in northern Ontario before the province became fully developed in our part of the country. Dad had several stories where he remembered being a kid in the 1950s and watched people boil moccasins in order to get some kind of food to eat.

          It takes a long, long time to die from starvation … but it also doesn’t mean that you are healthy and running around the whole time either. You go through several days or even weeks of no food and you can survive and just exist miserably. After that you can linger just sitting still or lying still for days or weeks before you actually expire. There are plenty of stories from the second world war about this in places like Auschwitz or Buchenwald concentration camps … or besieged cities like Leningrad or Stalingrad where thousands of people starved for weeks and months, yet survived.

          Even as you are starving and on your feet, you’ll probably go insane first and do things like actually wanting to kill people just to eat them … this is actually the basis of many of our stories and legends of Windigo and monsters, it was creatures that were once people that turned to hunting and eating people.

          Water is plentiful here in northern Ontario so we’ll probably be safe from that shortage … it might not be safe or convenient but we’ll have access to enough. Starvation from food might not take hold for several days, weeks or even months … but people will sure be miserable and very dangerous and unpredictable almost immediately once they know there will be a food shortage.

          I don’t bother prepping for these reasons … the ones who survive won’t be the ones who prepared or are the strongest or the smartest … the ones who survive will be the lucky ones who just happen to survive the longest without getting killed or murdered by other people.

        • PunnyName@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          This is why the Flint water crisis was such a big deal: it doesn’t take long to die when water runs out.

      • sundray@lemmus.org
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        1 month ago

        When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” To this day, especially in times of “disaster,” I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.

        • Fred Rogers
  • stupidcasey@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    TBF, Plants are Literally an Infinite Food Hack and Life of any kind is the rarest resource in the universe, Maybe we should be ashamed at ourselves for not recognizing daily miracles.

  • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Actual food hack: Save vegetable trimmings in a bag in the freezer. Onion skins, carrot peelings, celery bits, broccoli stems, etc. When it’s full, put them in a pot and cover with water and cook at medium heat for a couple hours to make free vegetable broth.

          • idunnololz@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            It doesn’t usually crunch. It’s usually tough and very chewy and fibrous. Like a really tough stalk of celery.

            Edit: Just to clarify I’m talking about this part of the broccoli.

    • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      I remember reading some kind of tip, maybe making a sauce out of onion and garlic skin, but in any case, is there any concern with mold or food safety with this method? There was some talk of it with whatever I read.

      • Ms. ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.ml
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        1 month ago

        If you’re freezing it all, no. It could get freezer burned but that just makes it taste off it should still be safe to eat. If you keep stuff in the fridge not freezer, or you let things sit on the counter too long between each processing step, it could go bad. That’s just general food safety though not just a trimmings thing

      • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        They go straight into the freezer, and are then boiled for a while, and then frozen and then boiled again.

        I haven’t had a problem, but you should probably wash them first

        • photonic_sorcerer@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 month ago

          Well, that’s the thing, who washes onion skins? Unless you’re going to use them later. But even then, dirt tends to get stuck between the outer layers.

    • unemployedclaquer@sopuli.xyz
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      1 month ago

      i love it, but the “bag” to which you refer, is a plastic bag. the freezer? that you bought at a big box store? or say you bought second hand? that all requires massive amounts of infrastructure. Massive amounts of power. Massive engineering projects to bring you that power.

      you’re not a hippy just because you store veggies in the freezer.

  • tiredofsametab@fedia.io
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    1 month ago

    My chicken egg didn’t make any new chickens after planting and smells really bad. 1/10 would not recommend

  • superkret@feddit.org
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    1 month ago

    With current wages and prices, life as a medieval peasant doesn’t look so bad in comparison.
    Imagine: fruit and veggies that actually still taste like the real thing, literally half the year off, and no mobile ads.

  • fl42v@lemmy.ml
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    1 month ago

    If a hacker planted [your] random seed, you’re in deep trouble, generally

  • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Ehh, I don’t have time to wait around for garlic. I do however plant spring onions from the grocer in my kitchen. They grow faster than I can eat them and come back quickly with a substantial amount of neglect.

    • HonkyTonkWoman@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      I killed my cilantro & parsley doing that in my herb garden with organic green onions. And I’m completely fine with that.

      It’s about the only time I’ll prioritize organic produce over regular produce, those damn onions are delicious!

  • ATDA@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    There’s also a seed that can spawn a talented musician that will take care of you when you’re old.

    But probably not.