[sen]

It’s been intense here (SE Australia). It’s just been raining for weeks now without stopping. I think we’ve had 2 sunny days in the last 4 weeks? Crops are dying, lettuce costs $10 each (if you can find them), internet keeps dropping out cos of shittily buried lines, drains overflow and flood the streets constantly, and the kids are going up the walls.

I know it’s normal for lots of areas of the world (and I’ve lived in those places) but we’re generally not equipped for it here.

[steve_adams_86]

I follow an Australian hydroponic gardener and general tinkerer on YouTube named Hoocho and he has documented a bit of the mess the weather has caused lately. It’s extremely disheartening.

One thing he noticed is that the water has pushed ants to find new places to live (including his growing enclosure, where they’ve made a home in his electrical box), and they’ve brought aphids to farm along with them. Obviously this along with extremely wet weather is terrible for his crops.

He has mentioned the $10 lettuce (initially $4, then $6, then…) and somehow it seemed so unlikely still, like there must be somewhere you can still buy normally priced lettuce. But I guess not. It’s wild how quickly food supplies can get gutted by climate fluctuations.

Suffice to say, I’ve begun hydro gardening for fast turn around essentials with the idea that in a time of crisis, perhaps I can avoid buying $10 lettuce. Thanks Hoocho, you’ve made my 3D printer far more useful and made hydroponics way more fun.

[ggm]

The supply chain logistics which let asparagus importers get stock from Peru in the off season are the same ones which means they can't just ring up on a whim and ask for some more, in the "on" season. Australian Quarantine and Customs Inspection service is pretty strong on vegitative matter, especially live vegitative matter: You need a LOT of paperwork, to be able to bring fresh produce into Australia.

And this local supply disaster noted, we kinda like it that way.

[Andaith]

What's wild to me is that apparently there's only one place on this continent that grows lettuce. It seems like a bit of an all-your-eggs-in-one-basket thing to have one valley in QLD(I think) that does lettuce for the nation, and they have some bad weather and suddenly we're all sans-lettuce.

[defrost]

Many rural areas in Ausralia have small scale local area market gardens, here in W.Australia most everything I eat is sourced within a 15 - 20 km radius be it flour, olive oil, lambs, oranges, etc (even the odd banana and a fw mangos) - but that's a far cry from the dedicated single crop volumes required to supply cities and for export.

Worldwide there's an issue with regions being devoted to mainly a single crop intended to supply tens of millions across several cities, often overseas.

Good when it works, better have a backup alternative when that fails.

[boffinAudio]

>(even the odd banana and a fw mangos)

Carnarvon represent!

[10u152]

Yes....and no.

Lettuce likes some pretty specific conditions. If there's one area that's perfectly suited to growing lettuce with the minimum resources (fertiliser/water etc) then grow it there. Better than trying to grow it in the desert or somewhere much too cold.

If Australians go without lettuce for a month or so nobody is going to die. Eat rocket, spinach and cabbage instead.

[twicetwice]

For Americans (and others?) who are OOTL, rocket == arugula. It has a bunch of other names too, apparently.

[distances]

For continental Europeans: they mean rucola

[dbetteridge]

WA has plenty of lettuce, not sure where that's coming from though.

[sturadnidge]

Same in NSW… no $12 iceberg heads around here!

[rootw0rm]

Get some spinach, arugula, cabbage, or any other leafy green?

[paranoidrobot]

> cabbage

There was big social media/news thing when KFC announced they were replacing lettuce with cabbage on their burgers.

A lot of unhappy campers there - tbh I think if they went further and made it a nice slaw with a sharp/tangy dressing then it'd be a massive improvement to their usual soggy, greasy chicken, and undercooked/limp chips (fries)

[prawn]

I'd seen a decent modular 3d printed tower for growing things like lettuce and it turns out Hoocho is using a newer and more advanced style of the same idea:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ak4sb-nRAcE

[sen]

Thanks for the mention of Hoocho, hadn't heard of him and binging his videos right now as I've started building an aquaponics setup and a greenhouse to grow more of my own food.

The ants thing is very random and very real too. My paint cupboard in the shed (where I keep all my spraypaints/chemicals) became an ants nest a few weeks ago thanks to the rain. I opened it up and every single surface was crawling with a full blanket of ants. I'd never seen anything like it in my life. Things we're going to see more and more of I guess.

[steve_adams_86]

I hope you enjoy his channel as much as I do!

He really motivates me to be more engaged and creative with the skills I have. I’m good about certain things, like I’ll go out in my shop and build things with wood, but I’ve been very slow to get into CNC and printing work despite my interest. I think the stuff he does made it click. He’s just making little clips, plant pots, and other small utilities, but he’s using them to create new and interesting solutions.

In other words he uses a little to do a lot. It’s really cool. Such a great way to lower that barrier and make 3D printing fun and useful.

Good luck with your projects, too. I added a small greenhouse years ago and it was so worth it, and it’s become a major part of how I plan my garden and think about growing.

[jillekuipers]

very nice to read that you are exploring something new, how is it going for you? and are you using growlights?

[steve_adams_86]

It’s actually going great! I do have it under lights, though I hope to get the hang of it and eventually set up some vertical systems outdoors to make them more cost effective. Maybe next spring.

Right now my lights, air pump, and fan cost around $25/month to run. Nutrients are remarkably inexpensive (perhaps pennies per head of lettuce assuming they mature on schedule). All said it’s maybe a $30-35 per month hobby which might generate far more than that value in real, edible food. It’s surprising how many plants you can fit in a 1m x 1m grow tent when you use hydroponics.

I’m sure I’ll mess up several times before I get it working smoothly, but I’ve loved the learning process so far.

Before this I got kind of hooked on growing micro greens. It’s such a great gateway to indoor gardening, the results are awesome and it’s very low effort.

Edit: I hadn’t worked out the math yet, but my “break even” would be growing just a few bundles of herbs and 3 or 4 lettuces per month. The system has 24 plant sites so by all means, if I don’t totally blow it, I should be plant-profitable pretty soon! And that’s excluding the micros which develop under the same lights. The cost of micro greens is wild.

[jillekuipers]

That's amazing to read. Thank you for sharing. The economics that you describe are really good! And I can see it is a rewarding experience to grow your own. Keep growing!

[cinntaile]

Are those 3D printed plastics food-grade?

[steve_adams_86]

People consider PLA filament food grade, but the only plastics touching nutrients or plants are explicitly rated as food grade.

I don’t worry as much about the exposure to PLA so much as I worry about the layer adhesion being poor and causing build ups of bacteria or disease that I can’t clean out of my system.

[quickthrower2]

Anecdotally, including us, anyone you talk to here is dealing with mold issues, and it is often a very expensive problem to fix. Having no let up period from I think Dec -> May where the property can dry out, in addition to rain bombs causing roof leaks.

Many roofers have automated messages saying "we're too busy, no point". There is backlog in getting mold tested. Also affects general trades who don't give dates, they just come when the whether is good enough.

[ace2358]

The mould issue are intense. I live in the Northern Rivers region. A lot of houses here are situated in forests. These forests are immensely powerful and are fuelled by massive fungal and lichen growths.

I got flooded out of my house and took 3 months to find a new rental.

I watched as the fungus invaded my house and started to eat everything. Mould on the walls, fabrics, paper, rubber, leather. Anything that had any sort of digestible organic matter on it went mouldy. Glass had a think layer of spores. Black loud coming down from the ceiling (this is a very bad sign, your property is seriously sick if you have black mould on your ceiling).

This whole area has been dealing with this stuff since they started building here, every house is affected. These wet periods just highlight the danger. Our country doesn’t have the resources to clean this issue up. That means millions of people are inhaling spores all day every day.

Spores won’t kill you, but they will ruin your life. They get into your lungs and cause health issues. I was sceptical about it until I moved to a dry area. My health shot way back up!

Good luck getting any tradies let alone building supplies.

I can get my lettuce local though for $3 a bunch from the farmers market! So there’s that :)

[doctor_eval]

Yes, I'm in the sunshine coast and have experienced all of the above. We were cut off from school by flooding for about a week, a drive that usually took 15 minutes was taking at least an hour because of the long detour. And our roof has leaked. At least we didn't need to put water in the pool ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But the mould ... that was the worst. I'm going to smell of vinegar and clove oil for the rest of my life.

[bogomipz]

>"But the mould ... that was the worst. I'm going to smell of vinegar and clove oil for the rest of my life."

Whats the connection between mold, vinegar and clove oil? Are those used to treat or prevent surface mold?

[paranoidrobot]

Vinegar is a a mild acid that's good for cleaning and carrying other things you might want to distribute.

Clove oil is quite effective at killing mold at very low doses. It's also got a number of other useful properties.

[JacobAldridge]

They are, and we've found them effective (thankfully my area in Brisbane has been mostly dry this past month, so we seem to have it under control). They've been so popular they were selling out of the supermarkets for a little while; when the rain was dogscatting down some wag on reddit asked what we rename 'The Sunshine State' and my suggestion of 'The Vinegar and Clove Oil State' was universally well received.

[quickthrower2]

Good old apple cider vinegar! Good for battling those annoying pantry moths, and good for salads.

[AlbertCory]

Pantry moths! See, Nextdoor really is good for something. Someone there put me on to these. I got some, and they work like a champ.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U1SMPBS

[danans]

> Anecdotally, including us, anyone you talk to here is dealing with mold issues,

Is the mold a recent thing related to el Niño or has it been a problem for a while?

In the US at least, many houses built in the 90s-2000s have mold issues because they were built without proper water vapor permeability and also with materials that are also not moisture resilient.

This is even an issue in dry areas like California.

[quickthrower2]

It has increased the frequency of the problem.

Homes tend to stand up to harsh rains, as that is normal. What is not normal is 100 almost consecutive days of the heaviest torrential rain I have every witnessed, similar to a tropical wet season.

With this much rainfall, you get your building tested like never before. Our back lawn was flooded most of the time, with the water seeping into the building whatever way it can. There are new roof leaks, persistent puddles that seep into the brickwork. A stream of water running like a river around the property. High humidity means nothing is drying out. And so on...

[danans]

> It has increased the frequency of the problem.

That makes sense, and rhymes with climate change. What are the mitigation steps that can be taken at this point without completely reconstructing the house to exist feet above the rainy season water level?

[JacobAldridge]

This year seems the worst we've ever seen in our parts of Eastern Australia - we've also had some of the worst ever floods thanks to La Nina (and climate change), so that's more water than ever. And mould being a living thing keeps spreading when not managed, so it's lingering long after the floodwaters receded.

[stareatgoats]

Seems to me like Australia either has catastrophic droughts or catastrophic rains. The engineer in me wants to create massive reservoirs during the wet spells to carry over the dry spells. But I guess it's not that easy?

[wffurr]

I believe those are called aquifers aka geologic water reservoirs. There's a lot that can happen, especially in urban areas with lots of hard scaped surfaces, to encourage rain water to enter aquifers instead of run off into the water shed or sewer/storm drain system.