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Gardens with a 12,000-person waiting list

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Re: Gardens with a 12,000-person waiting list

#61

Post by Loughla »

umvi wrote: post #58
DragonCot wrote: post #17

As somebody who has done his time on a waiting list for an allotment, and has been allotmenteering for the past 7 years now, I find these small German allotments vastly different to our UK ones. I fly reasonably often to Munich and I've often seen them alongside the railway lines... and they are immaculate. But the bit I find odd is that there is an awful lot of grass. We in the UK tend to focus more on food or flowe…

> And maybe we ought to encourage more people to stop playing video games and get out and grow more stuff. You can already do this in video games though (Harvest Moon, Stardew Valley, Farming Simulator, etc.)

As a farmer in a previous life, I 10000% do not understand Farming Simulator as a game for entertainment. Farming as a career is either mind-numbingly boring, or overwhelmingly depressing. There is nothing else.

How does that possibly translate to a video game?

Re: Gardens with a 12,000-person waiting list

#62

Post by DrScientist »

sandworm101 wrote: post #26

I used to think of gardening and allotments as a rather innocuous activity, something rather green that was good for all involved. But in the last year I've come to realize that it isn't environmentally sound. (1) Plastics and pesticides. They are over-used by gardeners as opposed to commercial farmers. Even without chemicals, the plastics pots, bags and other devices all end up in landfills. Those innocuous black po…

In terms of allotments most people I know don't use pesticides, much plastic ( if used, it's used again and again each year ), and municipal water use is very limited due to the allotment system that disallows hosepipes or direct irrigation systems.

Peat has been largely replaced with free compost from the local recycling centre.

Clearly lots of small scale production, even if well planned, is less efficient than well planned industrial production, but a lot of the work in the allotments case is human labour rather than CO2 producing machinery.

Note there is much less waste.

I was struck recently by a story on the BBC where they interviewed somebody living 'off-grid' in Finland. He told the story of how he occasionally get's vegetables that are discarded from a supermarket. His friend brought him some tomato's produced in Africa, packaged in France, sold on in the supplier chain - all the way to Finland where they were to be thrown away!!!

Obviously it's very hard to know how sustainable anything is given the complexity of supply - if only we had all the externalities ( environmental damage ) of production in the price ( energy properly priced ). The cost of disposal, or replacement of a resource factored in.

That kind of stuff requires government action, as free markets reward the exploitation of externalities.

Re: Gardens with a 12,000-person waiting list

#63

Post by xen2xen1 »

Loughla wrote: post #61
umvi wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And maybe we ought to encourage more people to stop playing video games and get out and grow more stuff. You can already do this in video games though (Harvest Moon, Stardew Valley, Farming Simulator, etc.)

As a farmer in a previous life, I 10000% do not understand Farming Simulator as a game for entertainment. Farming as a career is either mind-numbingly boring, or overwhelmingly depressing. There is nothing else. How does that possibly translate to a video game?

Video games are predicated on quick achievement of short term goals, so it's not actually realistic.. If you had to sit staring out a window at an empty field for 16 hours a day no one would do it either.

Re: Gardens with a 12,000-person waiting list

#64

Post by Loughla »

xen2xen1 wrote: post #63
Loughla wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a farmer in a previous life, I 10000% do not understand Farming Simulator as a game for entertainment. Farming as a career is either mind-numbingly boring, or overwhelmingly depressing. There is nothing else. How does that possibly translate to a video game?

Video games are predicated on quick achievement of short term goals, so it's not actually realistic.. If you had to sit staring out a window at an empty field for 16 hours a day no one would do it either.

I don't even mean the watching the crops or livestock grow. I mean the actual work part, too. Planting row crops is legit the most boring work I've ever participated in. It is less than mindless.

And that seems like the most active part of that game. Maybe if the physics were wonky that would be funny, at least. But this is one that I can't wrap my mind around.

Re: Gardens with a 12,000-person waiting list

#65

Post by pizzapill »

jbeales wrote: post #50
yorwba wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's unlikely you'll be able to find a ready-made translation for free, since it's very niche. Gesetze-im-Internet has translations of the more important laws, but for the Bundeskleingartengesetz there's only the German version: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bkleingg/BJNR002100983.ht... If you want a translation (to convince Montreal to adopt similar laws?) you'll need to find someone to translate it for…

Thanks for the link. I may be able to convince someone to translate if Google isn't good enough. If that page is the whole set of laws then it's really not so many rules as the article makes out - our rules in Montreal are probably just as long. I'm going to see if I can cherry-pick the best parts for my little corner of Montreal.

deepl.com works way better than Google translate. At least for German => English

I doubt you find much about alcohol consumption in this law since in Germany you are allowed to drink in public at 16 years old (14 with your parents)

Re: Gardens with a 12,000-person waiting list

#66

Post by KineticLensman »

sandworm101 wrote: post #26

I used to think of gardening and allotments as a rather innocuous activity, something rather green that was good for all involved. But in the last year I've come to realize that it isn't environmentally sound. (1) Plastics and pesticides. They are over-used by gardeners as opposed to commercial farmers. Even without chemicals, the plastics pots, bags and other devices all end up in landfills. Those innocuous black po…

UK, home gardener here, growing tomatoes, beans, plums, apples and pears in a garden that also includes mature trees (oak and beech). I think my gardening is environment-positive, personally.

1) I don’t use pesticides. I don’t grow veg such as cauliflower that are prone to insect attack. The only plastic pots are those used by the garden centre when they sell plants. Every few years I use moss-killer on the lawn, but I manually weed my borders and growing areas rather than spray herbicide.

2) I have never use peat, and neither do my gardening neighbours.

3) My garden gets its water from the rain. If it doesn’t rain, my grass scorches and I reseed. I do water my tomatoes at the height of the summer. I mix grass cuttings with the autumn leaf fall to create seed-free mulch that helps moisture retention.

My garden contains numerous plants that are attractive to pollinators, and I have a large population of birds that forage in it (I counted 14 distinct species in the last RSPB bird count exercise). There are bats in the summer and sometimes hedgehogs and stag beetles. I have a small number of wood piles that I leave undisturbed for whatever chooses to live in them.

Re: Gardens with a 12,000-person waiting list

#67

Post by 13of40 »

DragonCot wrote: post #17

As somebody who has done his time on a waiting list for an allotment, and has been allotmenteering for the past 7 years now, I find these small German allotments vastly different to our UK ones. I fly reasonably often to Munich and I've often seen them alongside the railway lines... and they are immaculate. But the bit I find odd is that there is an awful lot of grass. We in the UK tend to focus more on food or flowe…

I've got one this year in the US (outside Seattle) and I can't imagine the outrage that would ensue if I was seen using the space for barbecuing, much less drinking a beer. I even think some of the other gardeners look down on me because I'm raising mundane crops like potatoes and beets, instead of kale and lemon grass.

Re: Gardens with a 12,000-person waiting list

#68

Post by Benjamin_Dobell »

Loughla wrote: post #61
umvi wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And maybe we ought to encourage more people to stop playing video games and get out and grow more stuff. You can already do this in video games though (Harvest Moon, Stardew Valley, Farming Simulator, etc.)

As a farmer in a previous life, I 10000% do not understand Farming Simulator as a game for entertainment. Farming as a career is either mind-numbingly boring, or overwhelmingly depressing. There is nothing else. How does that possibly translate to a video game?

Being a member of the military deployed in a warzone is no doubt terrifying; for you and your family. However, video games built around that premise do pretty well!

I think it's fair to say that in order to be enjoyable, most games don't try give a realistic representation of the entire experience.

Re: Gardens with a 12,000-person waiting list

#69

Post by slics »

Coming from a small third world country myself, I didn’t know what the market was until I was 19 and came to the states. Everything we needed to survive we grew it or raised it. It was a way of life, at 5 or 6 years old I was able to watch over our farm animals and knew exactly what was expected of me. Now a 6 years old can’t even put their own shoes on by themselves let alone know how to do anything related to self manage.

I don’t blame as much the kids, the way of life in an industrial country is all about wasting time and not helping kids learn and enjoy life. We as parents have failed to transfer our experiences because we are to damn busy trying to keep up with everything it’s going on around us, and in many cases a mobile device is enough to shut a kid up. Yes, we live in a sad world that we don’t know anymore what will happen if one day markets are no longer an option.

Re: Gardens with a 12,000-person waiting list

#70

Post by ssully »

xen2xen1 wrote: post #63
Loughla wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a farmer in a previous life, I 10000% do not understand Farming Simulator as a game for entertainment. Farming as a career is either mind-numbingly boring, or overwhelmingly depressing. There is nothing else. How does that possibly translate to a video game?

Video games are predicated on quick achievement of short term goals, so it's not actually realistic.. If you had to sit staring out a window at an empty field for 16 hours a day no one would do it either.

You are right about most games, but then there is stuff like Truck simulators (EuroTruck Simulator, and there is an American one). I've dipped into a few streams to watch and I just don't get it. I know driving can be relaxing, but some of the "hauls" people do actually take hours. Hours, to virtually haul stuff from point A to B! Kudos to those who enjoy it, but I also struggle to understand it.
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