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Fruit Trenches: Cultivating Subtropical Plants in Freezing Temperatures

lowtechmagazine.com

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Re: Fruit Trenches: Cultivating Subtropical Plants in Freezing Temperatures

#51

Post by hutzlibu »

hyperpallium wrote: post #42
hirundo wrote: post #30

"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.

> pruning Do IT workers really need legs?

Of course not, if you can automate feeding. Sadly the current armless interfaces are not efficient enough, otherwise there is a big potential there as well. But the bonsai approach if applied young enough, should give efficiency boosts, too.

Re: Fruit Trenches: Cultivating Subtropical Plants in Freezing Temperatures

#52

Post by hutzlibu »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #26
artificialLimbs wrote: post #6

Super awesome! I imagine that most of the time, you don't even need to dig giant trenches, though. Sepp Holzer grows citrus in the freezing alps above ground. Their average temp is 5C. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GMXqgQIU9c

Sepp Holzer's farm is amazing. I think however it's unlikely that he's truly able to grow citrus fruit at scale even using all of his near magical techniques. Where he is able to grow citrus fruit is taking advantage of very small micro climates with ponds buffering temperatures and acting to reflect evening sun along with perfect orientation etc.

Permaculture in general sadly does not produce at scale at all and scaling up is very labour intensive.

Re: Fruit Trenches: Cultivating Subtropical Plants in Freezing Temperatures

#53

Post by hutzlibu »

Scoundreller wrote: post #29
paypalcust83 wrote: post #7

Climate-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.

https://farm.bot/

Re: Fruit Trenches: Cultivating Subtropical Plants in Freezing Temperatures

#54

Post by pjc50 »

yesbabyyes wrote: post #39
blaser-waffle wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Kind of Maoist and inefficient to have all your specially trained valuable first world labour do manual work, badly.

Re: Fruit Trenches: Cultivating Subtropical Plants in Freezing Temperatures

#55

Post by freeflight »

paypalcust83 wrote: post #7

Climate-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…

Case in point: Parts of Spain look like a winter-resort on Google maps [0], but that's actually greenhouses.

[0] https://www.google.com/maps/@36.8292745,-2.7821357,115749m/d...

Re: Fruit Trenches: Cultivating Subtropical Plants in Freezing Temperatures

#56

Post by samatman »

Spooky23 wrote: post #28
derefr wrote: post #11

I’ve often thought about the fact that most food into places like Barrow, Alaska is flown in, and wondered whether it would be practical to set up local infrastructure like this to grow food locally (with “practical” meaning “the CapEx of doing so would be repaid in logistical OpEx saved over a small number of years.”)

Forget about Point Barrow. I live in Upstate NY, one of the best Apple growing regions in the world. I’m eating an Apple grown in Chile while local orchards collapse. Food has more to do with capital and commerce than anything else. The inefficiencies of consolidated global scale distribution require squeezing every penny on the production side.

It's not a requirement, it's a choice, and one with catastrophic downside risk.

Refusing protectionist trade policy became popular among the people who make these decisions, a trend which accelerated after the collapse of the Soviet Union. We're in the middle of a crisis which brought to stark light the lack of resilience created by this relentless focus on efficiency and productivity at any cost.

But this is policy, not immutable law. Markets do predictable things in the absence of trade protection, subsidy, and state investment, true; but they do predictable things in the presence of them also.

Re: Fruit Trenches: Cultivating Subtropical Plants in Freezing Temperatures

#57

Post by brohee »

youeseh wrote: post #35
georgeoliver wrote: post #31

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!

How did he exhume it in the Spring?

https://www.instructables.com/id/Un-Bury-a-Fig-Tree/

Re: Fruit Trenches: Cultivating Subtropical Plants in Freezing Temperatures

#58

Post by Shivetya »

dharma1 wrote: post #13

I grow a few things in a (relatively small) suburban garden in London. My experience so far with fruit normally associated with warmer climates: Grapes - grow very well outside, lots of tasty fruit, sensitive to mildew Figs - grow well outside, fast, but not much fruit yet Citrus (lemon, lime and kafir lime) - Any frost is damaging, can only grow in pots and bring in during winter. Grows slowly and doesn't produce mu…

with regards to the olives, are you using water or brine to treat them?

Re: Fruit Trenches: Cultivating Subtropical Plants in Freezing Temperatures

#59

Post by koheripbal »

tathougies wrote: post #22
dharma1 wrote: post #13

I grow a few things in a (relatively small) suburban garden in London. My experience so far with fruit normally associated with warmer climates: Grapes - grow very well outside, lots of tasty fruit, sensitive to mildew Figs - grow well outside, fast, but not much fruit yet Citrus (lemon, lime and kafir lime) - Any frost is damaging, can only grow in pots and bring in during winter. Grows slowly and doesn't produce mu…

The Europeans also used 'fruit walls'. I'm thinking of setting up one in Portland. Basically a brick wall that you espalier a fruit tree to. You redirect your chimney floo or hot water pipes through the wall to keep it warmer than the surroundings in the winter. I'm hoping to be able to grow frost-sensitive hardy citrus. https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/12/fruit-walls-urban-fa...

The problem is that neither your chimney nor hot water pipes are continually piping heat. So the transient effect of the warm/cold cycles would likely make frostbite even worse.

...and leaving those heat sources on continually... well... that's very energy inefficient, to say the least.

Re: Fruit Trenches: Cultivating Subtropical Plants in Freezing Temperatures

#60

Post by danans »

dharma1 wrote: post #13

I grow a few things in a (relatively small) suburban garden in London. My experience so far with fruit normally associated with warmer climates: Grapes - grow very well outside, lots of tasty fruit, sensitive to mildew Figs - grow well outside, fast, but not much fruit yet Citrus (lemon, lime and kafir lime) - Any frost is damaging, can only grow in pots and bring in during winter. Grows slowly and doesn't produce mu…

> Grapes - grow very well outside, lots of tasty fruit, sensitive to mildew

When things open up again, you might consider visiting the are of Tenterden just to the south of you, which due partially to a warming climate, is now growing wine grapes for French winemakers (it used to grow primarily hops), as some grape growing areas of France have apparently gotten too warm.

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