Growing Food Is Getting Harder and Harder
Crop failures are becoming a reality. A report from my garden.
I am by no means a farmer, not even a professional gardener, merely someone who does some gardening on the side to provide fresh produce for myself and my close ones. Yet, I can see how the difficulty of these pursuits changed with time.
The first time I planted a garden on my own was in 2013. It was still a good year for this planet when things seemed normal. But that was just a tiny patch of land, nothing serious.
The following season, 2014, I expanded my garden three-fold and became much more ambitious about it. I planted a large variety of plants, and everything grew in abundance. We had a warm summer, punctuated with frequent rains every ten days or so. Just what the plants need. On a national level, that was the time of record harvests.
Having started gardening during a perfect season made me think this is easy. Just sow the seeds, and they will grow. Eight years later, I can only simile at those sentiments.
The past two or three years delivered a lesson. Even though I read a ton of books, gathered eight years’ worth of my own experiences, and attended many workshops in-between, my skills are barely a match for the current climate.
