Growing food is very complex, probably too complex for our brains. And I believe we will have to learn again how to grow food without our current support systems one day. I'm building projectcanopi.com toward that goal.
>Crucially, there is a tradeoff between growth rate and growth quality. Higher temperatures can result in faster growth but also thinner stems, weaker roots, and less flavor.
Doing the calculus graphically, we should expect this "quality optimum" lies just uphill of the inflection point of the curve (between T_base and T_opt), yes?
I went down exactly that path with an outdoor bed: 8 soil probes, a weather station, a camera, and a drip valve. The fun part turned out to be not the automation but letting an agent decide the watering every morning and write down what it expects, then check the probes the next day to see if it was right. Fixed schedules kept being wrong in ways that needed context (forecast, last week's response, leaf wetness).
It's still humbling: it missed caterpillars on the broccoli until I made it look at full-resolution photos. Wrote it up here: https://jatorre.github.io/garden/
> I am currently exhibiting overwhelming stress from deeply technical work being part of my every day life, and feel I am missing the 'nature' element of life. What should I do?
The brain responds:
> Gardening! A wonderfully complex system that will just 'live' without me! A delightful escape!
The brain asks:
> Yes, gardening! But how? There are so many variables! What are the parameters? Where is the specification outlining the success criteria? What defines a living organic system?
Just pick one thing, learn to grow it for a season or two. It's incremental learning, a bit of making mistakes and learning from the mistakes and research along the way. The knowledge accumulates over time, and after a while you can manage food crops, flowers and timber if you want.
Hehe. I recently donated a whole bunch of plants to a school. It was amazing to me how naïve the principal and staff were about plants. I had to explain that, no, no 'ground preparation' was necessary (in fact it was probably harmful) and yes, these plants would be fine once stuck in a hole without any attention: in fact they had evolved for millions of years to live right here!
Standard veggie gardening has very low ROI. Basically you need land (hyper expensive in cities), time, patience, and when you do get a crop it's in peak season and ~free at the shops. That's not to discount the experience or the cleanliness or the taste benefits of organic home grown veg: but from an engineering standpoint, you're better off not bothering. Hydroponics are a completely different beast. We're all lucky our society is no longer agrarian in nature. Hunter gatherers lived far better lives than agrarian peasantry.
Gardening is expensive. Good I stopped at plants and didn't go for chickens.
Every year is different.
First you fight the snails on the strawberries.
Then the aphids on peppers and roses (this is each year).
Next the mold attacks the tomatoes.
And if you don't have enough, the starling will eat your blueberries.
It's still humbling: it missed caterpillars on the broccoli until I made it look at full-resolution photos. Wrote it up here: https://jatorre.github.io/garden/
> I am currently exhibiting overwhelming stress from deeply technical work being part of my every day life, and feel I am missing the 'nature' element of life. What should I do?
The brain responds:
> Gardening! A wonderfully complex system that will just 'live' without me! A delightful escape!
The brain asks:
> Yes, gardening! But how? There are so many variables! What are the parameters? Where is the specification outlining the success criteria? What defines a living organic system?
https://imgflip.com/i/b5dvkg
Standard veggie gardening has very low ROI. Basically you need land (hyper expensive in cities), time, patience, and when you do get a crop it's in peak season and ~free at the shops. That's not to discount the experience or the cleanliness or the taste benefits of organic home grown veg: but from an engineering standpoint, you're better off not bothering. Hydroponics are a completely different beast. We're all lucky our society is no longer agrarian in nature. Hunter gatherers lived far better lives than agrarian peasantry.