[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

[BoiledCabbage]

Interesting - arugula and rucola are very similar phonetically.

[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.