Non-virus health effects of shelter in place - Printable Version

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RE: Non-virus health effects of shelter in place - stupac2 - 04-04-2020

(04-04-2020, 04:35 AM)OutsiderFan Wrote:  We were just told in CT our peak won’t be until late May. I suppose that is good from a curve flattening perspective, but holy crap that basically means two more months, maybe even three staying inside.

I have mentally been operating on “this will last about 6 weeks” and we should be returning to some semblance of normal, and I can handle anything for that long. But hearing this end of May timeline and then knowing it will take some time after peak before stay at home is lifted, it is a different level of disruption. It crosses from using a MacGyver solution to something, to wanting to get something more ideally suited to the job. Like, around these parts, if it snows heavy 1-2 days a season, I don’t need a snow blower or to hire a snow clearing crew. But if it snows heavy 1-2 times a week, I’m absolutely putting more resources into snow removal.

In this situation, I’m not even sure what it all means and what I really need to be allocating more resources to for this more structural longer haul. At least with the snow situation, I know the outcomes and implications of dealing with large amounts of the white stuff. I really have no idea with this situation.

My latest concern is need to plant garden, what, and how much to plant. We still have a month before growing season starts, but all the seeds are gone already from many places, and I have no idea what the supply of seedlings will be from the nursery a street over from us. Then, there is a family farm 20 minutes away that we always buy from that has everything you can imagine. But will they experience unprecedented demand and experience sellouts we’ve never seen happen before, because food supply chains are seizing up?

There are a ton of places to get great quality seeds online, we've ordered a bunch from these guys: https://www.groworganic.com/

There's also these guys although they're apparently out temporarily: https://www.seedsavers.org/

One nice thing about seeds is that you get a lot of plants from not much material. Honestly I could probably send you some from our stash if need be. (A couple years back, right as we were getting into gardening, we went to a beerfest that for some reason I never understood was giving free seed packets to every attendee. I went around asking people if they wanted them or if they wanted to trade and we ended up with dozens of packets, far more than we could plant. Plus my wife has continuously bought from catalogs, so we have quite a few.)

I will note that growing is non-trivial if you haven't done it before, but you can do all right with minimal investment/work. You'd probably want to build some garden boxes if you don't have them already, and I'd recommend getting some drip line (it's cheap on Amazon, I looked a few weeks ago and Rain Bird starter kits were like $30), and installation is easy. You may need to worry about deer/rabbits and other pests depending on your location, I don't have to deal with them so don't know much about mitigation.

Also, unless you have acres and acres of land, you're not feeding yourself doing this. We more-or-less maximized what we can do in our small lot and it's enough to get some extra veggies sometimes, except during tomato season when you're really pulling a lot, but that's short. And managing it so you're always getting something (peas and lettuce are shoulder plants, radishes grow fast, carrots slower, tomatoes yield a ton for a while but nothing a lot of the time, etc) is hard. There's a website for what to plant and when in CA run by the UC system, I think, maybe CT has something similar.

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