Apartment homesteading?

[white belt]

@ white belt:

If the potato buckets are only 6 inches vertical separation, a design with openings in the front (to the south) would likely be better. You might also want to give some consideration to sweet potatoes because I think their growth pattern might be better for vertical conversion and they like summer in the hot asphalt city type heat. What fun!

Hmm good points. I was imagining rows of these stacks 2 buckets wide running north/south if that makes sense (1 row of buckets hanging off each side of fence/post system that is running N/S). This is similar to the recommendation for regular garden beds, but I’m not sure if the buckets will block too much sun. The idea is the seed potatoes are planted towards the outside of the bucket, so that the stems/leaves can run up the sides of the bucket above them (probably will need ties or a support system). I’m open to other ideas though. Vertical separation could also be increased if needed.

Sweet potatoes are a good idea that I will look into. It’s possible they could be grown in that mid summer gap between the regular potato crops. Or maybe they are more suited than regular potatoes like you said.

[Alphaville]

Goats being walked on leashes: https://youtu.be/wDKY0r4OwKE

Goats being kept in urban settings:
-San Francisco: https://youtu.be/mCPKRc2Dpqk
-Oakland: https://youtu.be/8yYO4L2vegE

Again, the concept is that the goats are in an enclosed pen in the backyard, just like it is still quite commonplace in some neighborhoods to have large dogs that live in the backyard in the city. This is covered extensively in The Essential Urban Farmer with dimensions and everything.

Sure, apartments have restrictions and zoning laws exist. But these rules/laws are not edicts and can be changed. Look at all the zoning changes Brad Lancaster made in his town. He talks about how many things he started doing like compost toilet, curb cuts, etc were illegal at the time, but over the years he was able to build support for them in the community and change zoning laws. Humans learn by copying examples of others.

I see a few options to dealing with zoning laws:

-abide by existing rules and severely limit options, efficiency, etc (no goats, no compost toilet, etc)

-live in sufficiently decrepit neighborhood where zoning laws are not enforced (Novella Carpenter talks about this in the above video, though I believe you said she eventually did get a variance approved)

-find some legal loophole to classify the goats as pets/emotional support animals

-use some financial capital to bribe/lobby city gov’t for variance or change to zoning laws

-rally surrounding community/non-profit in support of issue (I think the Goat Justice League is one organization that has already done this in multiple cities)


Even without goats the potato homestead concept works, it’s just the loops aren’t as closed.

ah, fuck, i hate to play mr. negative with people's fantasies, but cmon, there is too much dopamine in that circuit. it's flyin' high--too high, like icarus.

you're seriously proposing committing a felony, i.e., the bribing a government official... in order to avoid purchasing fertilizer for some homegrown taters???

that is completely out of proportion and... wrong.

i was suggesting something more realistic, like this:
https://foxfarm.com/product/ocean-forest-potting-soil

i have more to say about those benzo goats in the therapy farm, the mucky barren flooor on that lady's yard (goats overgraze! need large inputs!) who says of her own operation "it doesn't make any kind of sense on any level," plus a number of other things; but i just had 3 organic martinis (lol) and don't want to go overboard in the pursuit of biological truth.

if you wanna do the goat thing legally and honorably, purchase a piece of wild abandoned lot in the outskirts of your city, donate it to a nonprofit you establish for the purpose of a petting zoo for disadvantage children, staff it with volunteers, and collect free buckets of goat caca for your potato buckets.

of course at that point you could just move the potato buckets to the petting zoo and kill 2 goats with 1 potato. now you have a farm, in the right place.

then donate the potatoes to the disadvantaged children so as to not self-deal.

but if you want everything, just buy the farm.

this is all a long way to say there is a scale for every kind of project and right-sizing is a real thing.

see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_unit

beyond inputs required by livestock:

decomposition depends on microbes.

microbes need a sufficient substrate and living conditions. things like volume, air, nutrients, ph, all kinds of constraints that have evolved over billions of years and cannot be imagined away.

there are systems that can accelerate things, like the biodigester i posted ya in the other thread, but even that requires sufficient space and time. that biodigester took a lot of time and effort and research to develop.

i recommend the ocean forest potting soil in the meantime. it's potent! it smells. but it's legal and allowed in apartments although some people find it a little too pungent. but yeah you will get mega-potatos and no jail sentence. cheaper than a bribe!

and of course you can buy compost at your local nursery. they have a proper compost yard.
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cmon guys. let's get serious about what fits *in an apartment*

some microbes can fit.
worms can fit.
various larvae can fit.
microgreens can fit
quail could fit.
lab rats (gross, but ok, prejudice) could fit
guinea pigs/rabbits could fit
greens can fit
tubers could fit given adequate inputs

any animal bigger than a medium-sized dog or barred by zoning/leases/ethics/etc ought to be out of bounds by definition.

brad lancaster and novella carpenter and the goat lady are not apartment dwellers. the oakland folks have a bigass backyard.

with apartments, not everything needs to happen in the apartment. networking with neighborhood/community/city/ etc is cool because apartments are in cities, not outer space. giving veggie scrapps to petting zoo, then collecting back goat pellets is cool, legal, ethical, realistic, etc.

manure needs to be aged, i should add. you can't apply raw, fresh manure to crops. raw urine burns plants.

anyway, apartments dont have bigass backyards. size/scale constraints are a thing. https://www.thrillist.com/news/nation/a ... -us-cities

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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... dney.html

[white belt]

you're seriously proposing committing a felony, i.e., the bribing a government official... in order to avoid purchasing fertilizer for some homegrown taters???

that is completely out of proportion and... wrong.

I believe the term in the US is campaign donation? Or donation to a politician’s charity? Or bumping elbows with political elites at charity galas? The wealthy pay for optionality and access all the time. The nice thing about local politics is it generally doesn’t require much capital to move the dial like on the national level. Social Capital also moves the dial quite well at the local level, but does take some time to build up. I’d be most interested in changing zoning laws in ways that would benefit the city residents in a climate change/low-energy intensity future over the long term.

decomposition depends on microbes.

microbes need a sufficient substrate and living conditions. things like volume, air, nutrients, ph, all kinds of constraints that have evolved over billions of years and cannot be imagined away.

Agreed. But bokashi is possible in a sealed container and Rob Greenfield passively composted his own poop in the middle of Orlando in sealed 55 gallon drums. It seems like our respective appetite to skirt laws/regulations are quite different, which is fine but again I don't like to eliminate a solution right off the bat because it doesn't quite meet current antiquated zoning laws. Zoning laws are different in every area and since this is a resource thread, there are likely many lurkers reading this who might take inspiration from certain ideas.

with apartments, not everything needs to happen in the apartment. networking with neighborhood/community/city/ etc is cool because apartments are in cities, not outer space. giving veggie scrapps to petting zoo, then collecting back goat pellets is cool, legal, ethical, realistic, etc.
[...]

anyway, apartments dont have bigass backyards. size/scale constraints are a thing. https://www.thrillist.com/news/nation/a ... -us-cities

Agreed. And yet when I suggested contacting your apartment management after banding together with neighbors to get roof or basement access, you scoffed at the idea and said that shouldn't be allowed. Existing community gardens I've researched in my area often have years-long waiting lists and are not scalable in current form. We're going to need some new ideas because the existing paradigm is not sufficient.

I think there's an argument to be made that if one is trying to minimize ecological footprint, living in a new high rise apartment building is not the best option. Almost every city I've been in (except perhaps Manhattan) has old housing stock within 1-2 miles of the downtown area of high rises. This is probably outside of the scope of this thread though since we're focused on solutions here, not on the pros/cons of a particular housing situation (maybe a better fit for the retrofitting thread).

Moving forward, I will keep some of the more "extreme" outdoor-intensive topics to another thread or my journal.

[white belt]

@ white belt:

If the potato buckets are only 6 inches vertical separation, a design with openings in the front (to the south) would likely be better. You might also want to give some consideration to sweet potatoes because I think their growth pattern might be better for vertical conversion and they like summer in the hot asphalt city type heat. What fun!

Hmm good points. I was imagining rows of these stacks 2 buckets wide running north/south if that makes sense (1 row of buckets hanging off each side of fence/post system that is running N/S). This is similar to the recommendation for regular garden beds, but I’m not sure if the buckets will block too much sun. The idea is the seed potatoes are planted towards the outside of the bucket, so that the stems/leaves can run up the sides of the bucket above them (probably will need ties or a support system). I’m open to other ideas though. Vertical separation could also be increased if needed.

Sweet potatoes are a good idea that I will look into. It’s possible they could be grown in that mid summer gap between the regular potato crops. Or maybe they are more suited than regular potatoes like you said.

Ok, after some research I do believe sweet potatoes might be a better solution for most zones. The benefits of sweet potatoes is that they like heat, of which you will have more of in concrete jungle of city and also just because of sun exposure on balcony/rooftop. They also grow in spreading fashion, which could benefit itself in a vertically oriented garden. Calories/nutrition are quite similar to the regular potato. Another bonus is the greens are edible.

So the idea would be to start with previously mentioned stacked bucket/fence design. Plant the sweet potato slips in only the top row of buckets (4th row), or perhaps the 4th and 2nd row of buckets. The 1st and 3rd row of buckets will just have fertilized soil. The sweet potato vines will spread out and down looking for new soil, then once they find the soil buckets below, they will grow roots into them to develop more tubers. Scale number of buckets up or down to fit your specific area and situation. Sounds like a good summer experiment when I get settled in at my new location to see if it will work.

Of course, one could potentially combine potatoes and sweet potatoes over a full growing season. Perhaps start a crop of potatoes in spring to benefit from cooler weather and harvest in early summer, then plant crop of sweet potatoes in summer to harvest in fall. Probably would boost morale too so you're not eating 4 pounds a day of one type of potato the entire year.

I am convinced the 5 gallon bucket might be one of the ideal solutions for container gardening of tubers in the city due to the following reasons:

-widely available and cheap (even new food-grade buckets are ~$5 retail)
-ability to utilize waste stream (many businesses receive shipped ingredients in buckets and will give them away)
-standard size makes them modular and scalable (so you can make them fit any space)
-lightweight (some roofs and balconies have weight limits)
-easy to handle and transport without equipment
-last virtually forever
-easy to tailor soil type and nutrient levels to specific plant (true of any container)
-tall cylinder shape means lots of space for subsurface root system and tuber development
-resistant to certain pests (true of any container)

Regarding the issue of getting nutrients and soil in an urban environment, I'm convinced that the feasible option for most urban dwellers is going to make their own soil at the start of each season (many ways to do that depending on where you want to source it from). There just isn't existing top soil in an urban environment and even if there is you will still have to contend with pollutants.

[Alphaville]

I believe the term in the US is campaign donation? [...] Social Capital [...] I’d be most interested in changing zoning laws in ways that would benefit the city residents in a climate change/low-energy intensity future over the long term.

sure but the political process doesn't move that way. you can't buy laws willy-nilly with a few bucks.

at every step of the way in a political effort there is an equal and opposing force. the no-goat party, the tenant associations, the landlord associations, the unions, every kind of business from landscapers to construction suppliers, police and fire requirements... politics is hand-to-hand combat, and things move slowly. to make politicsl change you need a constituency, either real or astroturfed.

check out for example the movie "the art of the steal" which documents how ed rendell took over the barnes collection to make it a core component of the arts district in philadelphia. holy shit, there's local politics for you... best wishes fighting city hall.

Agreed. But bokashi is possible in a sealed container and Rob Greenfield passively composted his own poop in the middle of Orlando in sealed 55 gallon drums. It seems like our respective appetite to skirt laws/regulations are quite different, which is fine but again I don't like to eliminate a solution right off the bat because it doesn't quite meet current antiquated zoning laws. Zoning laws are different in every area and since this is a resource thread, there are likely many lurkers reading this who might take inspiration from certain ideas.

well i am trying to come up with things that can be implemented in apartments where there are real-world constraints. i'm not here to write speculative fiction. and certainly do not want to present to lurkers the notion that "the road to ere is paved with bribes" or something.

i just want to find apartment-sized solutions. not building-sized ones or house-sized ones. apartments.

anyway zoning laws aren't merely "laws". they aren't arbitrary, they the reflection of community standards, traditions, precedents, and political negotiation, as described above. there are real reasons why you're not allowed to keep a barrel of your own shit in your apartment, so many i can't even beging to enumerate. i mean--do i really have to? maybe ask a firefighter... also ask your insurance broker.

rob greenfield does not live in an apartment. he colonized the suburbs for demonstration purposes. very different story.

Agreed. And yet when I suggested contacting your apartment management after banding together with neighbors to get roof or basement access, you scoffed at the idea and said that shouldn't be allowed. Existing community gardens I've researched in my area often have years-long waiting lists and are not scalable in current form. We're going to need some new ideas because the existing paradigm is not sufficient.

eh, you said "i bet your building has an empty basement.." and i just replied that "you lost the bet."

i have lived in many apartment buildings and i have never seen a single one with an empty basement. people who are in the business of extracting profits from highly valuable properties are not in the habit of wasting square footage.

in a basement, if there's a basement, you'll find essential things like boiler rooms, fuel tanks electrical panels and meters, elevator cages, utility meters; cash cows like coin operated laundry rooms or additional apartments; gyms and lounges and office centers that are offered as amenities to tenants; the end of garbage chutes; loading docks for moving; covered parking that is offered as amenities to tenants or rented separately, etc, etc.

the fight against cockroaches and rodents and other plagues is relentless and ongoing. no lanlord or condo board would want to keep livestock, feed stores and manure in a basement. might as well just keep rats. we complain a lot about car pollution, but the pollution from horses and carriages before the "horseless carriage" was awful.

anyway, when there is a roof terrace it's again offered as an amenity for grilling, parties, watching the 4 th of july fireworks, etc. and while you might want to grow greens there, the other 200 tenants might have their own ideas.

and actually, oftentimes the apartment is the basement... of a house or townhouse.

i once lived in a building that allowed tenants to garden in a small backyard. it was neat and organized. putting a goat there... would have turned it into a smelly mud pit. i can imagine the outcry: people looking out of their windows to see a dirty corral, as in a slum. and not enough goats to make all tenants happy, either.

apartments buildings house many people from many walks of life. they require rule by common denominator. they require agreement. they aren't the frontier. they have real constraints at multiple levels.

if you want to talk about reconversion of whole buildings that is one thing, but i'm not a building owner and that is totally outside my scope.

on the other hand, there are some 22 million apartments in the u.s., and many million more around the world, so coming up with a simple solution that could be easily repeated 22 or 100 million times without breaking the law or pissing off the neighbors is not nothing.

I think there's an argument to be made that if one is trying to minimize ecological footprint, living in a new high rise apartment building is not the best option. Almost every city I've been in (except perhaps Manhattan) has old housing stock within 1-2 miles of the downtown area of high rises. This is probably outside of the scope of this thread though since we're focused on solutions here, not on the pros/cons of a particular housing situation (maybe a better fit for the retrofitting thread).

i don't know that houses are better than tall buildings: they require more roads and cars, eat up farmland, use up more utilities, etc. and if farmed, with much less efficiency than actual farmland.

but yeah, that's a different subject altogether

Moving forward, I will keep some of the more "extreme" outdoor-intensive topics to another thread or my journal.

i appreciate it. the subject is a worthy one and deserves its own thread. i tried contributing to it from what i've learned living in a ranch. i've handled and fed (and eaten) actual goats and don't need youtubes for the goat experience. i know how much they eat and what it costs and i understand the logistics.

but it's all about the size of the project. compact farms are totally a thing, but they require... land.

funny to reflect on this: i've lived in the core of some major metros but also in more than one place so remote that "roads" were these deep-grooved mud channels where people have to lift the stuck trucks by hand.

with that in mind, the point of this thread was... to work out improvements for apartment dwellers, taking into account real-world constraints and applying conceptual rigor.

[white belt]

sure but the political process doesn't move that way. you can't buy laws willy-nilly with a few bucks.

at every step of the way in a political effort there is an equal and opposing force. the no-goat party, the tenant associations, the landlord associations, the unions, every kind of business from landscapers to construction suppliers, police and fire requirements... politics is hand-to-hand combat, and things move slowly. to make politicsl change you need a constituency, either real or astroturfed.

check out for example the movie "the art of the steal" which documents how ed rendell took over the barnes collection to make it a core component of the arts district in philadelphia. holy shit, there's local politics for you... best wishes fighting city hall.

You are right you cannot buy laws willy-nilly, but you most certainly can influence the enforcement of some laws. I thought part of ERE was using multiple forms of capital to meet goals or something? Maybe we are coming at this from different Kohlberg Stages?

Let's talk about Philadelphia. Owning a horse in the city is perfectly legal and there are stables that are in some of the roughest neighborhoods. They made a whole Netflix movie about it (Concrete Cowboys). You can keep a horse on 1/4 acre of land. You can keep a horse on any sized lot for up to 24 hours at a time. You can block traffic walking your horse down a city street.

Here's a thread talking about all sorts of farm animals that are kept illegally in the city but the codes aren't enforced: https://www.reddit.com/r/philadelphia/c ... own_goats/

Here's another article about a community rallying around a woman that has kept pigs and chickens in the city for almost 20 years after someone makes an anonymous complaint: https://6abc.com/philadelphia-news-pig- ... e/5342735/

So if a city already accepts horses, then why would goats that are the size of dogs be a problem? Let's not pretend that every city code is based on commonsense or logic, or that they are etched in stone. Of course there will have to be community buy-in and certain conditions met, but we're talking about livestock in cities which was routine in the western world ~60 years ago and is still routine in most other parts of the world. The same sea change happened for urban chickens over the past decade in most major cities.

I have lived in or seen numerous apartment buildings with underutilized spaces, whether in basements, on rooftops, courtyards, etc. Not every apartment complex is managed well or caters to those making well above median incomes who can afford to spend rent on things like rooftop grills or underground parking.

Does your 22 million apartment figure include things other than apartment buildings?

[Alphaville]

You can keep a horse on 1/4 acre of land.

i myself referred you to the 1/4 acre farm book, but apartments are not 1/4 acre area.

Does your 22 million apartment figure include things other than apartment buildings?

im not trying to solve apartment problems by redefining what an apartment is.

ideally we'd want something that can work in toronto or san francisco or hong-kong *and not piss off the neighbors*

e.g i can have potted plants in a balcony. i can't/won't move a cubic yard of manure up the elevator because having shoveled many cubic yards of manure i realize what a cubic yard of manure entails, and i know what apartment living entails.

real-world constraints + conceptual rigor

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all your links are, again, for houses.

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at this point i must assume you're trollin and so i must move on. best luck.

[white belt]

im not trying to solve apartment problems by redefining what an apartment is.

ideally we'd want something that can work in toronto or san francisco or hong-kong *and not piss off the neighbors*

e.g i can have potted plants in a balcony. i can't/won't move a cubic yard of manure up the elevator because having shoveled many cubic yards of manure i realize what a cubic yard of manure entails, and i know what apartment living entails.

real-world constraints + conceptual rigor

Every place you listed has different cultures, so there is no universal truth about what will piss off neighbors. There is also no universal climate across all regions, so one is still going to have to consider one's own individual region when coming up with solutions.

I can pay $15 dollars for 3 bags of cow manure (1 cubic yard) at Home Depot and haul that up an elevator. I suspect no one would bat an eye.

I've already proposed and experimented with microgreens, mushrooms, tubers in containers, and various other things. It seems like pretty much every solution has been met with some version of "I can't do that because..."

[Alphaville]

I can pay $15 dollars for 3 bags of cow manure (1 cubic yard) at Home Depot and haul that up an elevator. I suspect no one would bat an eye.

conceptual rigor means a cubic yard is 27 cubic feet: https://www.metric-conversions.org/volu ... c-feet.htm

that is 27 of these: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Black-Kow-1 ... /310465444

each cuft is 50lb so.... 1350lb , approx $189 plus tax (saw price at ace, maybe a little higher: https://www.acehardware.com/departments ... re/7002882

whole yards you usually buy with a truck though. price is much better that way, but wheelbarrowing it across a building might be problematic, as it spills cow manure on the corridor...

50lb manure for your apartment balcony containers is great though ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

it's already properly aged, and by purchasing you won't have feed cows and give them water then endure 9 months of flies while the manure cures under your window. which goes to real-world constraints.

[white belt]

I'm confused, why are you talking about hauling 1300 lbs of manure for a balcony garden? Sounds like a strawman to me. I never said anything about aging manure in open air, rather I listed 2 options (bokashi and passive composting in sealed barrel), and you could add biodigester as a 3rd during times of year that are warm enough for that. But sure, if your boundaries are the walls of your individual unit in your high rise apartment, then you are not going to close loops like that. As I said, I should've put my urban homestead thought experiments in a different thread.

[Alphaville]

ok, moving on....

seems that everything starts and ends with the worm bin though, so i'll have to focus on that officially now, as it all finally makes sense.

general problem:
having discarded the "worm pump" (so to speak, per above, they were supposed to be the heart of the system) due to space constraints and competition from other modules (indoor composting may work in some spaces, but not others), i need to rethink the whole scheme.

partial solution 1:
my outputs can now go to neighborhood compost, but inputs need to be imported as nutrient cycling happens elsewhere in the biosphere (preferrably within bicycling distance, but will work with what i can).

partial solution 2:
bought quality organic soil for potted plants in the name of expediency/catching up with the season. next year i might find "free" supply for amendments.

specific problem remaining:
microgreen design needs reworking. worms were supposed to substitute for pricey medium, and without worms, pricey medium and time-consuming treatments are not an option for me.

next iteration:
will experiment with simple brown paper towels in a box and a water spray. might indulge in a mild h2o2 dilution in the spray bottle to inhibit mold, but will not make a whole production of it. needs to be quick and simple to work, as much attention and focus is required by other modules. will test with broccoli and broccolini seeds left unused from last year, plus some free small cardboard containers from the supermarket.

[theanimal]

Changing a few of the words, this thread is starting to read just like an argument against FI back in the day..

I don't see apartment homesteading as solely meaning what you can do inside and on a small balcony. Perhaps that is high rise homesteading? Either way, as white belt has stated, there are those with access to larger outdoor space within a city. Examining those solutions are just as useful.

I do find it very funny/ironic that there is a push to get back on thread or encouragement to post elsewhere. How the turn tables.

[Alphaville]

Changing a few of the words, this thread is starting to read just like an argument against FI back in the day..

I don't see apartment homesteading as solely meaning what you can do inside and on a small balcony. Perhaps that is high rise homesteading? Either way, as white belt has stated, there are those with access to larger outdoor space within a city. Examining those solutions are just as useful.

I do find it very funny/ironic that there is a push to get back on thread or encouragement to post elsewhere. How the turn tables.

well, i'm using a neighborhood compost pile, so that means access to outside space.

however, that is different from jamming a compost pile into a space not zoned for it or where conflict with other residents will occur.

eg., look at this drama over innocent planters, and the 80 responses:
https://www.urbanorganicgardener.com/20 ... ding-code/
you just need *1 neighbor* complaining to the city or the landlord or the condo board and bureucratic nighmares will ensue.

"high rise homesteading" is certainly a possibility but it's a different subject altogether. e.g some buildings in some locations are beginning to use greywater: http://www.buildinginnovations.org/case ... k-commons/
but that's more about architecture, urban planning, etc. all very good, but a different subject, with different parameters and different solution spaces.

my greywater solution for individual indoor situation is i use a plastic wash basin to precapture outflow at the kitchen sink. needs no code changes, no specialized plumbing, no retrofitting, no insurance/liability nightmares, no pleading with large bureaucracies, no lawbreaking-- just a simple container.

i havent figured one for the bathroom yet due to low faucet height. but i should be able to rig something eventually if i can spare the time to start thinking about it, instead of being stuck arguing this. maybe a bowl of the right shape and a 2 gallon bucket for gathering volumes sufficient for toilet flusing... with a step-on garbage can instead of an open bucket.

maybe another bucket around the shower to catch the splashes? i could water plants with this as i dont use much soap... maybe we'll put the watering can right there next to some ferns...

-

hey, thanks for the opportunity to think this out loud. turns out argumentation stimulates thought

http://www.linternaute.fr/citation/3989 ... tan-tzara/

[white belt]

partial solution 1:
my outputs can now go to neighborhood compost, but inputs need to be imported as nutrient cycling happens elsewhere in the biosphere (preferrably within bicycling distance, but will work with what i can).

partial solution 2:
bought quality organic soil for potted plants in the name of expediency/catching up with the season. next year i might find "free" supply for amendments.

specific problem remaining:
microgreen design needs reworking. worms were supposed to substitute for pricey medium, and without worms, pricey medium and time-consuming treatments are not an option for me.

Like @Sky discussed earlier in the thread, soil is going to be your most expensive input for microgreens. Fertilizer is cheap and goes a long way (I started with miracle gro and it’s worked fine), although that’s not really closing loops. But first a system needs to be proofed as concept before perfecting inputs/outputs, which is why I opted for the easy route to get the system off the ground. You shouldn’t need any treatments other than nutrients at the start with soil since the microgreens are only growing for 2 weeks until harvest and growing indoors eliminates pest pressure.

I tried growing on paper towel but got poor results, so I probably won’t go back to it. I didn’t get very good output and it was a lot more finicky to keep the moisture levels correct. I also had some issues with mildew which was never a problem when growing in soil. It will be cheaper than new soil every tray though and there are some on YouTube who have had success with the method.

You might be able to save money by reusing the same soil and just adding new fertilizer for every batch you plant, but you will likely still need to top off the soil a little bit because you’re going to lose some each time when you pull roots out after harvesting.

[Alphaville]

Like @Sky discussed earlier in the thread, soil is going to be your most expensive input for microgreens. Fertilizer is cheap and goes along way (I started with miracle gro and it’s worked fine), although that’s not really closing loops.

hmmm... i got two thoughs about that...

first one is that seeds should not require nutrients or fertilizer to sprout-- all the nutrients are in the seed. what they need is a medium that holds moisture, eg the classic bean in the cottonball.

ofc beans are bigger than eg amaranth or quinoa seeds, which are tiny, and the amount of stored nutrients varies greatly. so maybe it depends on seed type... so i'll have to read up the science on this, or set up an experiment, whichever comes first.

soil of course holds moisture, and is cheaper than medium. but medium is good for commercial growers because it provides a clean environment (eg my potting soil contains bat guano, lol, imagine mentioning that these days) and the cost of sanitation can be factored into the sale price.

for self-consumption however the coco-coir and other mats are a money negative.

...

anyway, second thought is that, from a biological point of view, i wouldn't worry about closing the loops, as nature will take care of that. even with a petrochemical fertilizer for example, you'd just be closing loops that were open during the mesozoic...

what we want to avoid is maybe wasting our own resources... but loops will loop either way.

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But first a system needs to be proofed as concept before perfecting inputs/outputs, which is why I opted for the easy route to get the system off the ground. You shouldn’t need any treatments other than nutrients at the start with soil since the microgreens are only growing for 2 weeks until harvest and growing indoors eliminates pest pressure.

yeah. i'll start by skipping the nutrient bath and just observe maybe a test batch of different seed sizes. might make a little grid or something. maybe start with 4 cottonballs in 4 jars each with a different seed... well i'd need a bigger sample to make it a proper experiment but you get the idea.

I tried growing on paper towel but got poor results, so I probably won’t go back to it. I didn’t get very good output and it was a lot more finicky to keep the moisture levels correct. I also had some issues with mildew which was never a problem when growing in soil. It will be cheaper than new soil every tray though and there are some on YouTube who have had success with the method.

yeah, damn mildew... some youtubes show commercial growers using h2o2 solution. i have a ton of it for laundry and can find figures to adjust percentages.

this reminds me i need a new spray bottle for the "lab".

You might be able to save money by reusing the same soil and just adding new fertilizer for every batch you plant, but you will likely still need to top off the soil a little bit because you’re going to lose some each time when you pull roots out after harvesting.

the problem with old soil as i understand is not loss of nutrients (per above), but disease from rotting roots.

disease however gets controlled in biodynamic soils, which is the big advantage of using real soil (bat guano and all), worms, etc.

a bit of a conundrum that i'll try to solve with a bit of scientific method rather than straight copy.

thanks for pointing out the hurdles! most useful, provides empirical frame of reference.

[white belt]

hmmm... i got two thoughs about that...

first one is that seeds should not require nutrients or fertilizer to sprout-- all the nutrients are in the seed. what they need is a medium that holds moisture, eg the classic bean in the cottonball.

ofc beans are bigger than eg amaranth or quinoa seeds, which are tiny, and the amount of stored nutrients varies greatly. so maybe it depends on seed type... so i'll have to read up the science on this, or set up an experiment, whichever comes first.

In theory, seeds should have all of the nutrients they need to sprout. In practice, providing nutrients does improve output significantly for microgreens (at least in my experience and the experience of many growers). The 2 channels I follow most for microgreens are Corey's Cave and On the Grow. On the Grow in particular does a ton of "experiments" comparing different variables on output. Of course they are small sample sizes, but it can at least push you in the right direction for some techniques that might work. The nice thing about the short lifecycle of microgreens (2 weeks) is that you can iterate and test a lot of things.

anyway, second thought is that, from a biological point of view, i wouldn't worry about closing the loops, as nature will take care of that. even with a petrochemical fertilizer for example, you'd just be closing loops that were open during the mesozoic...

what we want to avoid is maybe wasting our own resources... but loops will loop either way.

Maybe over the very long term nature will take care of it, but considering the human race has broken nearly every nutrient cycle (see here), I still strive to close loops as much as possible. There is likely an 80/20 principle that applies like anything else and 100% closed loop is just an aspiration, but it is still a guiding principle in ERE systems design.

[Alphaville]

In theory, seeds should have all of the nutrients they need to sprout. In practice, providing nutrients does improve output significantly for microgreens (at least in my experience and the experience of many growers). The 2 channels I follow most for microgreens are Corey's Cave and On the Grow. On the Grow in particular does a ton of "experiments" comparing different variables on output. Of course they are small sample sizes, but it can at least push you in the right direction for some techniques that might work. The nice thing about the short lifecycle of microgreens (2 weeks) is that you can iterate and test a lot of things.

hah! close to drosophila melanogaster life cycle. can do a lot of trials indeed.

alright, im filing this "on the grow" name with my project support files for microgreens.

anyway, had a nice talk with my wife about where to make space for the sprouts, and she pointed out that we're already starting the outdoor plants, are already swamped, and maybe we can worry about microgreens in the fall. which is the correct take, given the massive number of projects we have coming up this summer too many!

so i'm putting this in the tickler it for late august. meanwhile, on with the balcony, and maybe i'll have a chance to read on microgreens more casually.

Maybe over the very long term nature will take care of it, but considering the human race has broken nearly every nutrient cycle (see here), I still strive to close loops as much as possible. There is likely an 80/20 principle that applies like anything else and 100% closed loop is just an aspiration, but it is still a guiding principle in ERE systems design.

yeah, although... if you think about it, e.g. chemical fertilizers jacob mentions, once we dig them out of the ground we're not putting them back in the ground--new nitrogen will remain in circulation.

of course too much nitrogen is stressing ecosystems everywhere... eg i'm quite familiar with the troubles in the chesapeake bay https://www.cbf.org/issues/agriculture/ ... horus.html

but i can't help to think somewhat along the lines of george carlin... maybe the earth made us because she wanted to make a withdrawal from her hydrocarbon savings account

no, this is purse horseshit on my part, and irresponsible commentary outside of jokes. but yeah, the earth one day will go on without us...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rld0KDcan_w

[7Wannabe5]

More than half the food currently consumed by the human population is produced using fertilizers produced in factories combining atmospheric nitrogen ( which is omnipresent but not directly of use to plants) and natural gas. Natural gas is currently cheap, so food is currently cheap. First negative effect is this process produces greenhouse gas emissions. Second negative effect is that food costs are directly tied to limited fossil fuel resource. The bio-available forms of nitrogen (fertilizers) produced through this energy intensive process do not remain in the loop in bio-available form. They are converted back to atmospheric nitrogen gas through several processes including denitrification by bacteria in anaerobic situations. The bacteria uses the oxygen from nitrates and releases the nitrogen as gas not available to plants.

IOW, since the essential processes of nutrient availability requires healthy bio-activity at the level of the soil (highly analogous to digestive process in our own guts), the situation as it stands is that more than 50% of the human population is basically being fed on factory produced “soylent” like soil. If/when natural gas supplies to these factories are no longer available we are f*cked.

[Alphaville]

If/when natural gas supplies to these factories are no longer available we are f*cked.

yup, we are. not "the planet," but we. (takes carlin about 2' to start making his hilarious point)

anyway re: nitrogen fixing, im picking beans for some of my balcony planters. know of a good pole bean that might wrap around things, a bit like bindweed? planning to use balcony as trellis. or maybe peas instead of beans...

[7Wannabe5]

You can’t beat Kentucky Wonder for delicious and productive in my climate. As far as I know all pole beans climb by wrapping rather than attaching.