In uk.rec.gardening Oz wrote:
: Tim Tyler writes
:In uk.rec.gardening Oz wrote:

:Some of the things I've grown (or am growing) this year:
:
:Basil, Broccoli, Cabbage (black), Cabbage (red), Celery,
:Chervil, Chickory, Chickpea, Chop Suey, Collard, Coriander,
:Corn salad, Cress (curly), Cress (land), Cress (water),
:Fennel, Flax, Kale (red russian), Lettuce, Mibuna, Mizuna,
:Mustard (red), Mustard (yellow), Mustard (spinach), Pak
:Choi, Spinach (perpetual), Radish, Rape, Rape (salad),
:Rocket (salad), Rocket (wild), Sesame, Sunflower, Texel,
:Turnip, Alfalfa, Aduki, Clover (red), Fenugreek, Lentils
:(puy), Mung, Pea, Soya, Amaranth, Buckwheat, Corn, Kamut,
:Quinoa, Rye, Spelt, Wheat, Raspberries, Taeberries,
:Loganberries, Wolfberries, Black Currants, Gooseberries,
:Hazel nuts, Apricots, broad beans, peas, onions, garlic,
:purple sprouting broccoli, swiss chard.

: How big is your veg plot?
: How big is your greenhouse?

:: and what percentage of your total food intake (calories) do home
:: grown crops amount to?
:
:Most of my calorie intake comes from fruit, nuts, oils and seeds.
:I hardly grow any of them. The fruit I grow are almost all berries.

: Given the list above, it should be much more than that unless you are
: growing only a few plants of each. In which case I would suggest you are
: playing at growing your own food. Two frames each of runner and climbing
: french would (even for a veggie) oversupply food for several months.
: Heck four of us can't begin to keep up. Courgettes (four plants) we
: throw out or give away probably 70+% and swiss chard similarly. I only
: have a tiny untended veg plot, too.

:I estimate I currently grow about 10% of my calories for the year -
:if that.

: Then you either have a very small plot, aren't trying or aren't growing
: the right things.

Size is the main limiting factor. I estimate I have about ten square
metres to work with.

I'm not really trying to get my calories from my garden. Indeed, I
grow almost entirely very low calorie produce. My main aim at this stage
is to increase the diversity of fresh, good quality salad vegetables I
have available to me - not to feed myself entirely from my garden.

::It may not have been medicine's most explored area - but
::to say we know "virtually NIL" on the subject seems like
::an overstatement to me.
:
:: Give me some examples of LD50, noel and content of a few food plant
:: toxins then.
:
:Some other day, perhaps - since doing so would prove nothing.

: It proves we have NO DATA on most (if not all) food plant toxins.

Hardly - I think to prove something you have to make some sort of case
for it - rather assert and then challenge others to disprove it.

:::I suspect that eventually mechanical barriers to pests will eventually
:::make many of today's pesticides redundant.
::
::: Dream on, you have no idea what you are talking about.
::
::Rather obviously, I'm talking about growing a greater proportion of
::things "under glass" - or in controlled environments.
:
:: To feed the world?
:
:Yes.
:
:: speechless at the stunning level of ignorance
:
:Don't underestimate technological progress.

: I don't, I do understand economics.
: Just work out the energy cost of covering the UK arable area under
: glass. Go on, have a go.

I am not talking about glass. And I am /certainly/ not suggesting
donig this today. See where I wrote "eventually". I even did it
twice - to emphasize the point.

::You may have noticed that there's been something of a trend in that
::direction over the last hundred years.
:
:: Not in the UK, it's almost zero now other than for cut flowers.
:
:...and watercress, and tomatoes - and an increasing number of other
:things.

: Watercress is all grown outside hereabouts.

You may be right there. On further investigation I found little
evidence for commercial watercress operations being undercover.

: Tomatoes are mostly, if not nowadays entirely, grown outside the UK.

Certainly not entirely: http://www.edie.net/news/Archive/6619.cfm

:: Far too expensive.
:
:Expense is one of the main problems - but prices are falling.

: Eh? Industrial glasshouse costs are rising.

:I expect them to continue to do so.

: they will continue to rise, that's for sure.

In my estimation, the cost of building such things is likely to continue
to fall for some time - with technological developments in materials
science - and increased technological abilities in other areas.

Compare the expense of completely enclosing areas with transparent
weatherproof material now with the cost a hundred years ago - for
example.

Something similar will be true - probably throughout the construction
industry - and I expect we'll see increasingly large and sophisticated
constructions as a result.
--
__________
|im |yler http://timtyler.org/