Where I grew up (41.3 deg N, on the Atlantic coast) I was always amazed by our neighbor, who would bury his ~15 foot tall fig tree every year to protect it from freezing. For some reason in my child mind it seemed to defy the laws of nature, though of course it was quite the opposite!
Fruit Trenches: Cultivating Subtropical Plants in Freezing Temperatures
31–40 of 103 posts
Re: Fruit Trenches: Cultivating Subtropical Plants in Freezing Temperatures
#32Climate-controlled cultivation will likely become a necessity for food production as climate change intensifies. Spain, South Africa, many Middle Eastern and other countries are already heavily reliant on greenhouses. Also given that megadroughts, floods, and hurricanes are likely to be the new normal, sufficient capacities of solar-powered desalination will be important to sustain food production levels. My main imm…
Problem is that greenhouses are the most laborious. Can’t drive a tractor through to plant and pick everything.
Incredibly laborious. Pretty much everything has to be done by hand -- watering, fertilizing, etc. Totally worth it for specialized plants, or in certain climates, but you can't scale them to feed 6-going-on-7 billion people.
Re: Fruit Trenches: Cultivating Subtropical Plants in Freezing Temperatures
#33Where I grew up (41.3 deg N, on the Atlantic coast) I was always amazed by our neighbor, who would bury his ~15 foot tall fig tree every year to protect it from freezing. For some reason in my child mind it seemed to defy the laws of nature, though of course it was quite the opposite!
The whole thing?
Re: Fruit Trenches: Cultivating Subtropical Plants in Freezing Temperatures
#34Where I grew up (41.3 deg N, on the Atlantic coast) I was always amazed by our neighbor, who would bury his ~15 foot tall fig tree every year to protect it from freezing. For some reason in my child mind it seemed to defy the laws of nature, though of course it was quite the opposite!
The whole thing?
Yes, he would tie it down and create a kind of berm along its length.
Re: Fruit Trenches: Cultivating Subtropical Plants in Freezing Temperatures
#35Where I grew up (41.3 deg N, on the Atlantic coast) I was always amazed by our neighbor, who would bury his ~15 foot tall fig tree every year to protect it from freezing. For some reason in my child mind it seemed to defy the laws of nature, though of course it was quite the opposite!
How did he exhume it in the Spring?
Re: Fruit Trenches: Cultivating Subtropical Plants in Freezing Temperatures
#36Climate-controlled cultivation will likely become a necessity for food production as climate change intensifies. Spain, South Africa, many Middle Eastern and other countries are already heavily reliant on greenhouses. Also given that megadroughts, floods, and hurricanes are likely to be the new normal, sufficient capacities of solar-powered desalination will be important to sustain food production levels. My main imm…
Problem is that greenhouses are the most laborious. Can’t drive a tractor through to plant and pick everything.
Actually its the other way around! Automation in the controlled environment of a greenhouse is much simpler to implement than out on a field. Ok, there are certain crops that still haven't been cracked in terms of automating the picking mostly due to fragility/spoilage of the items being picked, but other than that, you have a regulated climate/humidity/temp (you can pause "rain" , etc in sync with the tasks you want to automate), you have a flat surface for your machines, or vertical rigging to hang machines off of, etc.
Re: Fruit Trenches: Cultivating Subtropical Plants in Freezing Temperatures
#37"Training small citrus plants was key to extending their cultivation across all regions of the Black Sea coast, where until then it had been impossible. This was achieved by pruning and guiding citrus plants into a creeping form, which reduced their height to a mere 25 cm." People complain about cubicle farms, but there's so much we can do to train workers to be productive in them, if we start them young enough.
Finally an industrial application of bonsaikittens.
Re: Fruit Trenches: Cultivating Subtropical Plants in Freezing Temperatures
#38The University of Minnesota has done a bit of research and put out some guidance on constructing deep winter greenhouses: https://extension.umn.edu/growing-systems/deep-winter-greenh...
They use a similar method in that thermal mass is used to store energy, but instead of trapping the heat with soil/straw for a season the daily heat is stored in masonry, stone, or water. On sunny winter days it can be -20°F outside while the greenhouse is 80°F, though a string of dark days can mean that supplemental heating is needed.
Re: Fruit Trenches: Cultivating Subtropical Plants in Freezing Temperatures
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Problem is that greenhouses are the most laborious. Can’t drive a tractor through to plant and pick everything.
Incredibly laborious. Pretty much everything has to be done by hand -- watering, fertilizing, etc. Totally worth it for specialized plants, or in certain climates, but you can't scale them to feed 6-going-on-7 billion people.
There are in fact about 7.8 billion of us. I believe we will have to change from this Growing part of your own food is a good idea. We should all plant some potatoes this year – a not so laborious way of producing nutritious food.
Re: Fruit Trenches: Cultivating Subtropical Plants in Freezing Temperatures
#40An alternative is greenhouses. These folks have been growing tropical plants at 7200 feet in the Rocky mountains for years using inflatable greenhouses:
https://crmpi.org/