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Why you can’t grow cool-climate plants in hot climates

crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt.com

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Re: Why you can’t grow cool-climate plants in hot climates

#101

Post by 7thaccount »

griffzhowl wrote: post #68
7thaccount wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blackberry and it's variants like dewberry are very common in the south and do fine in the high heat and humidity. It's almost impossible to kill. I have 4 different varieties growing wild and in planters at my house. I also have many apple trees and they do struggle - even the native varieties. I think that's mainly due to fungus, aphids, and the poor soil though. No idea about avocado.

Are you talking about the southern US? How can there be native apple varieties? I thought they were all originally from around central Asia and a quick look on wikipedia confirms this

"Native" might have been an excessively strong term. I should've said there are varieties that are unique to the region even though their ancestors originally came from Asia.

Example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas_Black

Re: Why you can’t grow cool-climate plants in hot climates

#102

Post by mythrwy »

bix6 wrote: post #66
mythrwy wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! I take the zone denial the other way as well and have tropical plants like banana, mango, dragon fruit, pineapple etc. that I protect in the winter from snow and freezing temperatures.

Don’t tempt me with mango! Where’d you learn the techniques?

Trial and error mostly although I have a degree in agronomy and worked in horticulture for a long time.

Re: Why you can’t grow cool-climate plants in hot climates

#103

Post by squigz »

griffzhowl wrote: post #93
squigz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be the same way one would get money for bioengineering the global ecosystem? At least we know how we'd go about one of these options.

I think cutting back on what we're doing already wouldn't draw a lot of grant support. We can make a presentation showing "Look, if we just ate in-season locally-grown vegetables and wore clothes made from the fibres of our locally grown nettles and wool we could solve the climate crisis in maybe 100 years!"... It doesn't seem to be economically compelling for people in the UK or US who are getting tomatoes in Januar…

> We can make a presentation showing "Look, if we just ate in-season locally-grown vegetables and wore clothes made from the fibres of our locally grown nettles and wool we could solve the climate crisis in maybe 100 years!"...

With respect, this doesn't seem to me a very fair assessment of the cause - the average person is not to blame, greedy, amoral corporations and spineless politicians are - nor the solutions. A more fair way of putting it might be, "If we seriously invest in alternative energy sources and reducing the major sources of carbon emissions, we'll be able to stop the climate crisis from irreparably fucking the planet, causing even more problems than we have now."

Re: Why you can’t grow cool-climate plants in hot climates

#104

Post by vanderZwan »

jnmandal wrote: post #17

Joey has really pushed boundaries on botany. Great to see his thoughts being discussed here. I think everyone could learn something from him

As someone very naive on this topic, can you elaborate on where he pushed boundaries? I follow his YT channel and he obviously pushes boundaries from an activist perspective, and I'm a fan[0], but I'm not able to judge his scientific credentials.

[0] (love that one video where he shows how to get away with replacing poorly chosen non-native plants in public parks that will inevitably die out within a few years with native species that will thrive; basically, put on a yellow vest and dress like a gardener and nobody will bother you)

Re: Why you can’t grow cool-climate plants in hot climates

#105

Post by anonymars »

ekianjo wrote: post #41
manoDev wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Horse and buggy”. How dramatic. If at least the US got in line with the rest of the world, we would be half-way there. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita The problem is not the 8 billion people, is the handful that have an disproportionate impact.

> If at least the US got in line with the rest of the world, we would be half-way there. China and India would like a word with you

Per-capita?

But even so, in the future it'll be small consolation to think "nothing to be done, someone else was worse"

Re: Why you can’t grow cool-climate plants in hot climates

#106

Post by anonymars »

griffzhowl wrote: post #97
tfourb wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask and you shall receive: https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2 You will notice that the picture does not change radically if you include emissions from trade (which is what you were asking). Turns out while China expects a lot of stuff to the us, it doesn’t have that big of an impact on net emissions.

Thanks, but what is it supposed to show? Looks like West outsourced their production to the East and this data just shows that?

I took away from that link that per-capita emissions were 14 something for the US and 8 something for China

Re: Why you can’t grow cool-climate plants in hot climates

#107

Post by Loughla »

NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #76
notepad0x90 wrote: post #71

Wouldn't a hydroponic setup help the author with this? Dumb question, but is it difficult to setup a temperature and humidity controlled box or room where you could stow away the plants at night? A possibly dumber question, why do hydroponics always seem to involve indoor/UV lighting? Why are there no container-sized setups that you can place outdoors, but the climate and sun-light is controlled, and it's all powered…

do you mean greenhouse? I guess in this case it would have to be greenhouse with good AC?

AC drops your humidity first and cools second. Plants like water and humidity, when cool weather plants (sometimes especially cool weather plants).

Re: Why you can’t grow cool-climate plants in hot climates

#108

Post by anon84873628 »

griffzhowl wrote: post #62
anon84873628 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read the article it explains why.

Yeah, ok. I read about half the article and it was just talking about growing tomatoes in Texas rather than their homeland of the northern Andes. Now I see in the last paragraph it says C4 photosynthesis is more efficient in hot climates and C3 more efficient in cooler climates. I don't see though what's the benefit of bioengineering C3 plants to operate with C4, rather than to utilise C4 plants where the climate is…

Sure, we should diversify our food sources. The stat is something like 20k+ edible plants, but 90% of calories come from 20 of them, and 50% come from wheat/rice/maize.

(Note that maize, sugar cane, sorghum, and some millets are C4 crops already in use.)

It takes a lot of selective breeding to develop varieties that are palatable, productive, climate adapted, (remain) disease resistant, amenable to automation, etc etc. There are folks doing amazing work in their backyard to improve promising and interesting species (see "landrace gardening" community. It's super cool how one can leave a "genetic legacy" for future generations this way.) And of course university and extension office breeding programs too.

Many people believe that we need to shift towards a more management-intensive perennial-emphasized polyculture / "permaculture" type approach in order to create diverse and resilient systems tailored to the local conditions. But then the entire food consumption system needs to align on top of that. Lots of coordination problems.

So of course the big industrial ag systems are also doing things their way, which includes modern biotechnology. I'm not opposed to that - if I could wave a wand to improve some crops I certainly would. Hopefully we get lots of people exploring all types of solutions.

Re: Why you can’t grow cool-climate plants in hot climates

#109

Post by tuna74 »

fifilura wrote: post #95

In southern Sweden the vast spruce forests are starting to die because of the spruce bark beetle. You can see it everywhere now. Supposedly due to warmer summers. And new planatation replace spruce by larch or leaf trees. Luckily they don't seem to affect pine trees, but they have their own climate expectations.

It is actually because of drier summers and monoculture. The more spruce there is the more they beetles there are.

Re: Why you can’t grow cool-climate plants in hot climates

#110

Post by abeppu »

anon84873628 wrote: post #108
griffzhowl wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, ok. I read about half the article and it was just talking about growing tomatoes in Texas rather than their homeland of the northern Andes. Now I see in the last paragraph it says C4 photosynthesis is more efficient in hot climates and C3 more efficient in cooler climates. I don't see though what's the benefit of bioengineering C3 plants to operate with C4, rather than to utilise C4 plants where the climate is…

Sure, we should diversify our food sources. The stat is something like 20k+ edible plants, but 90% of calories come from 20 of them, and 50% come from wheat/rice/maize. (Note that maize, sugar cane, sorghum, and some millets are C4 crops already in use.) It takes a lot of selective breeding to develop varieties that are palatable, productive, climate adapted, (remain) disease resistant, amenable to automation, etc et…

Is there an agricultural analog of portfolio theory? Permaculture always seems to be pitched in terms of the ecological perspective, but I wonder if there's some way to firm up the idea that if your fields/portfolio are diversified across a range of crops/assets whose yields are not closely correlated, you'll have fewer bad years.
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