Anthony Powell

Advantages of urban life:
So much less need for a car, it can be a 'where do I put it?' problem. But public transport is so much easier, and in a city they all join up, with short waits.
Lots of food, but lots of ultra-processed. Organic takes a bit more searching for.
You may be in an urban heat island, reducing heating bills. Smaller properties, especially flats and terraces, reduce external walls. And if your neighbour heats their home to a higher temperature, you'll get some of that through your common wall.
In the community, there may be a Transition Town group, community gardens/allotments, community eating (often involving volunteers gathering end-of-life food to feed all, poor, homeless, and general community).
Lots of other social groups, often in walking distance. Street lights may hide the stars, but they'll guide you home without a torch.

In the UK, Hockerton Housing Project near Nottingham. A row of earth-sheltered houses, cooperating on renewable energy, food growing, water, transport etc. https://www.hockertonhousingproject.org.uk/services/events/

If you're happy with sugar from less usual soources, I've always enjoyed chewing the stalk of sweet corn, freshly picked. LIkely that the sap of the whole plant could be a sugar source. Maybe treat it like sugar cane?

HIstorically, wood ashes would be used as soap. The ashes would sit in a vessel, e rained on, and the leachate collected. In days when clothes would seldom be washed, they'd get right greasy. Grease + potash makes soap. Similarly good at pulling the natural, beneficial oils out of your skin!

Jane Mulberry wrote:
I'd like to try dahlias. I read that there's quite a range of flavours depending on the variety, some taste good, others don't. Are there any you recommend?

The one I've managed to keep going for a few years, that I obtained from a council planting as they were being uprooted, I found to be 'Wars of the Roses' (); you don't see it about much. I enjoy eating that, and I'm able to minimise slug damage. I don't know if there's much between them, Lubera had some on sale - seem to have stopped, maybe they've realised lots of varieties can be eaten. Go for large-growing sorts for bigger tubers, easier to peel. Maybe the ray florets will give a clue as to root flavour.

Dahlias are also perennial edibles, originally grown for their tubers before Europeans became besotted by the flowers. Nice fried or roast, slices keep their crispness in stir-fries. Ray florets also goodin salads.
Oca - before the tops get frosted, they make a great sorrel-ish salad.

You might like to try growing Groundnuts (Apios americana) up your Sunchokes. One supports the other, and both call for a good ground clearout! I get a lot of slug damage; I'm able to overwinter and restart groundnuts in pots in spring without slugs, but the sunchokes get blitzed regularly. Had them under sheeps' fleece this spring, slugs still got them.
Sweet Cicely (Myrrhis odorata) can be used as a root veg. I've used it when I wanted its location for something else. Can't remember everything I used it for, but some went into a flapjack.

greg mosser wrote:oh, we’ll open one up and check, but i suspect it’s actually a decorative but inedible gourd. they’re really tiny.

Our local UK supermarket sells 'Munchkin' edible pumpkins, orange ones size of a man's fist.
I grew some of the seeds, only managed immature fruit before slugs started taking too much interest; cooked what I could rescue. Still here!

Here's my way of talking about CO2:
I've two bottles, gravy browning in water, one 280ppm, other 430ppm. The difference is visible. They're equivalent to CO2 in the atmosphere, pre-Industrial Revolution and now. While the gravy browning is absorbing light, the CO2 absorbs infra-red. What there was pre-Industrial was enough, the difference is already causing chaos. It's idiocy, but we're still adding to it. Totally insane that we're adding more than the year before, every year!
To get a grip on it, we need to move away from economic growth and improving standards of living, both based on fatness of wallets. It works by innovation, seeking more cost efficient ways to extract from holes in the ground, make stuff, sell it and dump in other holes. More and more, faster and faster... can Nature cope?
We need to move to Quality of Life, measured by smiles - sharing, caring, mending, living with nature.

To replicate my bottles, take 4 x 1 litre bottles. 14 grams of gravy browning in the first, 21.5 (impossible on scales measuring no fractions of grams, so 22 g) in the second. Make up to a litre with water. From each pour 20 grams into the third and fourth bottles, and fiil to 1 litre. The result is qualitative, not measurably accurate. The first two are equivalent to half the air above our heads, the latter two to looking through about 100 metres of air.

Around here in Cheshire, UK we have many small-fruited pears, called Hazel pears, or Hessle pears. They're very quick to ripen. It's known they were sent by rail for dying uniforms during the World Wars.
I don't know whether that's an option for unripe pears.