this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023
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I think the math in this assumes everything is being sown directly into the ground, which for a lot of things is the least space-efficient option.
You can hang-grow tomato plants, vertical garden stuff that doesn’t need much soil, and build potato towers to reduce the footprint (25 sqft turns into 5 sqft pretty easily), and leaf veg/herbs grow very well in window planter boxes or pots (with or without supplemental light). You can also grow mushrooms for protein and those hardly take up any space, and can produce very prolifically (and are mostly grown inside anyway).
Lots of options to reduce the actual space needed to grow stuff for self-sustaining food.
Although I’m honestly an advocate for either growing in soilless (cococoir) or hydroponic, if you have the space to have those inside. A single tomato plant is enough for most people, and a couple bell pepper or other self-pollinating plants (easier than pollinating them yourself with a paint brush). Year round fresh foods are so worth it, and a lot easier than canning everything.
I think the problem with hang-growing is that you have to spread out your rows further apart to allow enough sunshine to get to the bottom layers. However there are some plants that do very well when grown in the same space, such as the 'three sisters' method. It would be interesting to see a study done based off of modern knowledge to see how much actual space would be needed for the largest variety of food, and what kind of failure rate you should expect without access to fertilizers or pest control.
I think we might be looking at this fundamentally differently.
I’m not talking rows of hanging plants, that’s probably worse than direct sowing, given the shade footprint. You put those where nothing else grows, or to shade plants that need some shade.
So like over concrete, between beds if your yard sucks for in-ground (mine is gravel 3 inches down) or off a porch or something.
Ah gotcha... I thought you were referring to maximizing the amount of crops in a given area where you basically planted in all three dimensions to use up less yard space. And sure, with proper planning you could still do that to some degree, I was just imagining rows of tightly-spaced hanging baskets all competing for sunlight.