Plants

All my friends are into plants now. PN have turned their house into a japanese zen-garden rainforest, S is starting out with a few plants on tiny pots. Folks in Boston have been doing their own plant things (I remember those home depot runs, oh) and friend A from college is starting her own urban farm with her partner. Exciting things are happening! And oh the squash we planted like three weeks ago in a pot is huge and outgrowing it, needs to be replanted and actually might bear fruits. I'm starting to miss Boston, the potential for farming is one of the driving reasons for it.

Folks have planted mostly 'pothos' and other types of 'money' plants or 'currency vegetation'. Plants that survive well in low-light and indoors, and have been traditionally considered as 'lucky'. And now they're moving into sprouting avocado seeds and germinating them, chives onion garlic greens even, chilli peppers are easy to work with even for folks with no balcony, that's what they've been upto. I've been trying to encourage people to plant more edible fruits and vegetables, the problem is they need lots of energy in the form of solar radiation to produce fruits, something not available to the apartment-dwellers.

Convincing people to buy house in the burbs so they can grow kitchen garden, and have enough space for hydroponics hasn't been successful yet but seems to be the winning strategy. People seem to be really impressed by the width of crops that can be grown successfully inside, particular ones that have high market value and can be consumed with minimal processing in-situ, if you know what I mean. That's the way to better tomatoes and lettuce -- of all dispositions -- and chilli peppers and microgreens.

Meanwhile I'm trying to figure out a good way for myself to be in a position to start farming on real land, in a sustainable manner for the foreseeable future. That's where the rest of the world seems to want to end up eventually, want to be ahead of the curve.