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 Yodhrin wrote:
The allotments are actually owned by the council, they just assign you a small plot of land if you want one and there are some free, so they get final say on what you put there. The back green is communally owned by all the couple of hundred flats in the tenement block, and you need planning permission to put "large powered structures" in gardens, which combines to mean that if even a handful of people who live in the tenement block object to the council when you apply, they block you. Anyway, before long I'll either have the job I want and thus enough money to escape these misanthropic old hags, or they'll have died off and ceased to be a problem anyway

My wife and I have been growing our own veggies for a while now and plan on getting chickens in the Spring for fresh eggs. This year we've grown;
- potatoes
- tomatoes
- peppers
- strawberries
- zucchini
- asparagus
- Brussels sprouts
- peas
- radishes
- various herbs (chives, cilantro, basil, lemon balm)

We also planted an apple tree, pear tree, and plum tree, as well as dwarf lemon, lime, and orange trees but they'll all take some years to produce fruit

I wish I had space for such things. I have been considering an herb garden, but it's really the donkey end of the grow season so I doubt I'll have much to go on there.

I had cookies for breakfast.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
I wish I had space for such things. I have been considering an herb garden, but it's really the donkey end of the grow season so I doubt I'll have much to go on there.

There's more than a handful of winter herbs, depending upon your climate.

Some herbs are good for all seasons and all ages.

 Ahtman wrote:
Some herbs are good for all seasons and all ages.

Spoiler:

That was well worth clicking the "show this post"

Now I just want whipped cream.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
The allotments are actually owned by the council, they just assign you a small plot of land if you want one and there are some free, so they get final say on what you put there. The back green is communally owned by all the couple of hundred flats in the tenement block, and you need planning permission to put "large powered structures" in gardens, which combines to mean that if even a handful of people who live in the tenement block object to the council when you apply, they block you. Anyway, before long I'll either have the job I want and thus enough money to escape these misanthropic old hags, or they'll have died off and ceased to be a problem anyway

My wife and I have been growing our own veggies for a while now and plan on getting chickens in the Spring for fresh eggs. This year we've grown;
- potatoes
- tomatoes
- peppers
- strawberries
- zucchini
- asparagus
- Brussels sprouts
- peas
- radishes
- various herbs (chives, cilantro, basil, lemon balm)

We also planted an apple tree, pear tree, and plum tree, as well as dwarf lemon, lime, and orange trees but they'll all take some years to produce fruit

Feed those chickens good quality feed and you'll get eggs like you wouldn't believe. After having a fresh egg from your own chickens, with rich, deeply colored yolk and firm whites, you'll never be able to go back to those wussy supermarket eggs with their watery, pale, tasteless yolks.

We grow some herbs as well, along with potatoes, lettuce, peppers, tomatoes, strawberries, asparagus, melons, and a handful of other things. We also have two peach trees and two apple trees. The peach trees this year were so fertile that several branches broke from the weight of all the peaches. There's really nothing like a sun-warmed peach just off the limb.

~Tim?

 Some_Call_Me_Tim? wrote:
Feed those chickens good quality feed and you'll get eggs like you wouldn't believe. After having a fresh egg from your own chickens, with rich, deeply colored yolk and firm whites, you'll never be able to go back to those wussy supermarket eggs with their watery, pale, tasteless yolks.

We grow some herbs as well, along with potatoes, lettuce, peppers, tomatoes, strawberries, asparagus, melons, and a handful of other things. We also have two peach trees and two apple trees. The peach trees this year were so fertile that several branches broke from the weight of all the peaches. There's really nothing like a sun-warmed peach just off the limb.

~Tim?

That's the plan my wife wants the chickens for her birthday, and we take good care of all our critters here (the cat who needs to lose weight might disagree with me though ). We're looking forward to our trees starting to grow fruit

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
I wish I had space for such things. I have been considering an herb garden, but it's really the donkey end of the grow season so I doubt I'll have much to go on there.

That's why I wanted to use something along these lines. Each container has growth capacity equivalent to an acre of land farmed using conventional methods, uses almost a tenth as much water, less power, less fertiliser, and can produce a crop every 6-14 weeks depending on what you grow. Even better, there's far less labour involved than conventional farming methods; once you have everything set up and connected to water and power, all you have to do is ensure sufficient reserves of fertiliser for a full growth cycle and you can just leave it alone, the computer manages everything for you, not to mention that harvesting is easier when you don't have to dig anything up. It's barely more expensive than buying an equivalent capacity piece of land, at least around here.

My step mom decided to buy some organic(?) apples from a local vendor because they don't use pesticides and the apples taste better.

I chuckled a little when she found a worm in one and threw it away. Every single apple has wormholes.

Originally wanted to get chickens for the farm, but with the foxes and my dog being a poultry killer it's not really a safe option. We would need some serious chicken security.

We still grow various kinds of squash, okra, tomatoes, peppers (hot and bell), carrots, radishes, sugar snap peas, and eggplant.

That season is mostly over though, so we're moving on soon to various lettuces, brocolli, more carrots and radishes, more sugar snap peas, beets, possibly turnips, and whatever other cold weather crop strikes my fancy.

 streamdragon wrote:
Originally wanted to get chickens for the farm, but with the foxes and my dog being a poultry killer it's not really a safe option. We would need some serious chicken security.

We still grow various kinds of squash, okra, tomatoes, peppers (hot and bell), carrots, radishes, sugar snap peas, and eggplant.

That season is mostly over though, so we're moving on soon to various lettuces, brocolli, more carrots and radishes, more sugar snap peas, beets, possibly turnips, and whatever other cold weather crop strikes my fancy.

At the Houston house, the neighbor behind grows chickens. Occasionally they fly into the back yard - aka the Terror Dome.
Neighbor across also has chickens.

 Frazzled wrote:

 streamdragon wrote:
Originally wanted to get chickens for the farm, but with the foxes and my dog being a poultry killer it's not really a safe option. We would need some serious chicken security.

We still grow various kinds of squash, okra, tomatoes, peppers (hot and bell), carrots, radishes, sugar snap peas, and eggplant.

That season is mostly over though, so we're moving on soon to various lettuces, brocolli, more carrots and radishes, more sugar snap peas, beets, possibly turnips, and whatever other cold weather crop strikes my fancy.

At the Houston house, the neighbor behind grows chickens. Occasionally they fly into the back yard - aka the Terror Dome.
Neighbor across also has chickens.

Oof. What's the death count so far? My dog is a cane corso mastiff / great dane cross who has serious food issues; she was a rescue found starving and weighing in about 25lbs (roughly 1/3rd her current weight). One of my neighbors chickens got loose and I didn't know it, so I didn't think much of letting my dog out without her invisible fence collar. *bawk* *Bawk* *BA-.....* That was an awkward call, let me tell you...

AT LEAST TWO chickens and a fighting rooster that we know about. Rusty is an 85 lb freight train freight train of a dog with massive jaws and a desire to eat animal intruders that cannot be underestimated.

Fun memory. TBone and Rodney visiting. TBone discovering the chickens on the other side and trying to chew through the fence to get them. He stayed there about two hours, then got lost about half way back (just sat down in the iddle of the yard barking for help), and Rusty going out and escorting him back.

 Yodhrin wrote:
It's so frustrating; with one old shipping container, some hydro equipment and the right seeds, I could be producing vegetables to feed several families for almost nothing in terms of cost -I mean literally so cheap I could afford to give them away- and with very little effort. But nooo, "it's an eyesore", "allotments are for people to grow things properly", "I'm a cretinous luddite that thinks computers are magical boxes run by faeries and your fancy techno-farm terrifies my tiny little mind"

I don't know man, I think those communal farming plots are about more than achieving the most efficient farming. There's a community aspect, and also some notion of having a nice little patch of garden in place. I think a big shipping crate lumped down in the middle of the communal garden isn't really the point.

 streamdragon wrote:
Originally wanted to get chickens for the farm, but with the foxes and my dog being a poultry killer it's not really a safe option. We would need some serious chicken security.

We still grow various kinds of squash, okra, tomatoes, peppers (hot and bell), carrots, radishes, sugar snap peas, and eggplant.

That season is mostly over though, so we're moving on soon to various lettuces, brocolli, more carrots and radishes, more sugar snap peas, beets, possibly turnips, and whatever other cold weather crop strikes my fancy.

My mother-in-law has a redbone coonhound that loves to maul small mammals, so when we get the chickens we'll be making sure that the coop is hound proof. Our dogs (Australian shepherd/snow dog mixes will try and herd the chickens, while the lab/greyhound will likely just ignore them )
With the local ordinances we can't have roosters, but if our yard was bigger we could have a bison

 sebster wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
It's so frustrating; with one old shipping container, some hydro equipment and the right seeds, I could be producing vegetables to feed several families for almost nothing in terms of cost -I mean literally so cheap I could afford to give them away- and with very little effort. But nooo, "it's an eyesore", "allotments are for people to grow things properly", "I'm a cretinous luddite that thinks computers are magical boxes run by faeries and your fancy techno-farm terrifies my tiny little mind"

I don't know man, I think those communal farming plots are about more than achieving the most efficient farming. There's a community aspect, and also some notion of having a nice little patch of garden in place. I think a big shipping crate lumped down in the middle of the communal garden isn't really the point.

The point of allotments is ostensibly to allow people to grow veg; they're littered with old sheds, decrepit greenhouses, and 90% of them are not planted with any thought for aesthetic sensibilities. They literally refuse on the basis that using the space to grow using hydro doesn't have enough dirt involved, the idea being that I would somehow be "wasting" the plot by not grubbing about in the muck.

If you're referring to the communal back garden; yes, that's a lawn, but there's a fairly substantial portion at one side(the tenement block is roughly U-shaped, with one end lacking a structure as it backs on to a local rugby playing field) is covered in trees. One is a huge bloody willow with plenty of room underneath it for the container, the thing would barely even be visible from the garden. It's pure Ludditry; these same bunch of hags spent six months objecting to the council to try and stop them using dumpster-style bins rather than just having people leave rubbish bags out on the pavement, because they thought they were "too complicated"

 Yodhrin wrote:
The point of allotments is ostensibly to allow people to grow veg; they're littered with old sheds, decrepit greenhouses, and 90% of them are not planted with any thought for aesthetic sensibilities.

Ah, fair enough then. Consider me annoyed on your behalf, for whatever good that might do you

 Seaward wrote:
I had cookies for breakfast.

Since it's finally in stores again, I had Boo Berry.

...But I had the "proper" portion size, and had it with almond milk. It was very difficult to not fill the largest bowl I had...