greenhouse suck factor

I agree that it allows one to eat  highly domesticated/technology dependent annuals locally for longer.If that is what a person wanted to do?I guess what Im seeing here is that mostly its northerners who have become dependent on the greenhouse industry.Personaly,Im trying to grow food sustainably for myself and perhaps close relations.I do see though that if a person wanted to support/become dependent on an industry,that greenhouses would be a better industry than the many worse industries.

I think there is a philosophical question when supplying your own food. One can focus on what they are accustomed to eating - and obsess about growing that. The alternative is what I once heard called "scientific neglect". Grow a bunch of stuff, and see what is easy to grow - and eat that.

Here in the tropics, bananas, plantains, camote (like sweet potatoes), lima beans, amaranth, peppers, carrots, black eyed peas, okra, culantro, basil and a local squash, papaya, mangos, star fruit, oranges, limes, grapefruit - so easy to grow it is disgusting. I actually have so much okra right now that I am getting sick of it - and that never happened in New York when I lived there!

Cauliflower, broccoli (with decent size heads), swiss chard, summer squash, green beans, peas, tomatoes - growing them will break your heart (at least I don't do well with them)

If I am looking for a challenge, I try to grow those things that I love from the north, making sure I have plenty of the others so we won't starve.

A greenhouse might well be the same situation. It is very nice to be able to have fresh veggies year round - but it sure is going to cost you a lot of work - and resources. Freezing and canning might well be easier, and more sustainable.

But I rather doubt any of us avoid trying to introduce some variety to our diets - only natural.

And I will continue to try to grow decent tomatoes which nearly kill me in just starting to change - and then rotting. 

Self sufficiency is both wasteful and impossible. Humans evolved to get along with each other, especially where trade is concerned, because the humans who didn't died out. If you want to die out then yes aim for total self sufficiency, but Adam Smith made a very solid case for specialization. Industry need not always be powered by fossil fuels, but it will always exist, and utilizing the advances that it made will often be beneficial. People have been working glass for 5500 years or so, it is a sustainable industry (we make it much better now) after fossil fuel use ends. Though we have only been making sheet glass for about 1000 of those years that is well before the use of fossil fuels (and one of the only non-death inducing technologies to come out of Dark Age Europe).

Yes it is useful for growing annuals better, or for getting more fruit from small trees, or keeping small trees and bushes north of their zone. Trees aren't enough, trees wont be enough, we will always need veggies too. Trees of all sorts have constant pest problems, from chestnut weevils to fluffy tailed rats, some of them are fairly easy to deal with (shoot the tree rats and eat them) some, like fungus, are not. As the concentration of the trees rises you will hit a critical density and pests and disease will rise, robbing you of your trees (which take lifetimes to grow in the first place) and leaving you hungry. Now I think we need more trees, I think trees are great, we also need diversity of trees and bushes, but we need annuals too. Diversify, diversify, diversify, the first rule of sustainable profits in business is diversification, the first rule of sustainable foods in permaculture is diversification. Plant trees, and grow a garden, and keep some animals, and a pond with fish if you can keep it. Something will always fail, and the penalty for failure is starvation if that is all you are growing.

You should also learn about The Red Queen Effect, which is the reason annuals are so valuable, especially if you diversify.

Edited to clarify: If you have the room to grow planting trees and digging a pond in addition to growing your garden is a good idea, as a society we need diverse food sources, and we shouldn't discard any based on prejudice, however, if you are growing, you should not spend inordinate amounts of your time making everything you might use from scratch, a small stockpile of materials and knowledge(books) isn't necessarily a bad idea, but trying to do everything yourself is. Nature will not make room for you to live, it takes a lot of work to make a place for our selfs, just like the deer have to spend all day looking for the best food in order to survive.

Agreed - self sufficiency can be wasteful. For example, we just bought a Jersey milk cow but it will produce in a single day the amount of milk we use in a week - so our caretaker takes the rest.

He also raises pigs, and I want nothing to do with pigs - but I like pork. He couldn't grow a vegetable to save his life though - and has proven it more than a few times to my satisfaction.  So I grow the vegetables and we share. He also can't seem to catch a catfish, even though the pond is stocked with about 500 and I get 3 to 4 in 10 minutes without even trying.

We share skills and resources - and therefore do much better. He bought the milk cow because I have no idea how to judge one, and probably bought it for half the price I would have.

Fred so glad you brought up the difference between zones and to have someone who has experienced the drastic differences. Living in S.C. and then moving to the high altitude desert I can appreciate the adaptations required to grow a garden in different areas.
With a greenhouse in my current area with careful planning and dedicated effort I can harvest almost year round. Without a greenhouse I can not. so we are looking at 10 month of production versus 3.5.
Careful selection of plants that require or come to harvest early or are frost hardy is required.
The greenhouse attached to my house assists in heating the house during the winter and is where I do my starts for raised beds and  main greenhouse. While the starts are going in the attached greenhouse potatoes, carrots, radishes, greens are already going in the main greenhouse. New potatoes will be ready by July 4th for potato salad. Once their gone starts are ready to put in.
To be able to grow melons last year was great learning to make them climb and not take up too much  growing room was an interesting challenge.
I still love my unsucky productive greenhouse.

well said Fred!I also grow some stuff thats more demanding for comfort foods although I dont pretend its sustainable.Generaly,the majority of my vegetables have been replaced with wild foods just because its so much easier but also because I dont like having my food system dependent on industry.High degrees of specialization is neccessary for civilization.lots of fun as most people with jobs can tell you.I was more refering to scale of specialization.Village scale(self sufficiency was probably slightly incorect term)vs industrial civilization scale.As we move toward the latter,our dependence increases and I prefer less of that.

Mt.goat wrote:
well said Fred!I also grow some stuff thats more demanding for comfort foods although I dont pretend its sustainable.Generaly,the majority of my vegetables have been replaced with wild foods just because its so much easier but also because I dont like having my food system dependent on industry.High degrees of specialization is neccessary for civilization.lots of fun as most people with jobs can tell you.I was more refering to scale of specialization.Village scale(self sufficiency was probably slightly incorect term)vs industrial civilization scale.As we move toward the latter,our dependence increases and I prefer less of that.

I am still trying to figure out how to grow a chocolate chip cookie, but no success so far.  ops: By the way, I have two greenhouses, but they are to keep the rain out so I can control fungus, etc. Aside from construction costs, which are very low, there are no on going costs.

In fact, there are no costs since the greenhouses are really used for our plantations to raise tens of thousands seedlings per year. And at that time, they have screening, so that the seedlings won't get fried.

To present the other side - as fuel costs increase, the cost of a passive greenhouse in the North might well be worth it, instead of having to figure in the cost of transportation for substandard veggies.

My view of permaculture is to try to do the best you can, but start small and improve, always seeking to get closer to completely sustainable - but just like dieting, sometimes you just have to grow a chocolate chip cookie... (there is no brown sugar in Costa Rica, so no way to make homemade chocolate chip cookies - but I can grow my own cacoa... )

what you said about either growing what you eat most or what thru neglect will grow the best for you really hit home with me today.

I have been diagnosed as prediabetic and am changing to severely low carb eating..and i am amazed at how the change in what i am growing and eating has changed.

I find right now that the hugest part of my diet right now has been the wild greens that come naturally in disturbed soil in my garden...lambsquarters. It is a low carb green that i totally love and i've been going out and picking that, spinach, swiss chard and green onions and making one meal a day out of some sort of green to help to balance out my blood sugars (now if hubby would just let me raise my own eggs and meat !!!)

I am a little confused as to what to grow since i have just spent the last two years buying every fruit and berry crop i have been able to buy and fit into my space, but now fruits and berries are a bit iffy on my diet, i'm sure i'll still eat small amounts of them..but not like i used to ..i was a big fruit, whole grain and vegetable person. I did go ahead and plant the beans peas potatoes and corn, even though i'm not sure i'll be able to eat them when i harvests them or not, but I am leaning now toward my greenhouse holding a huge fall garden of greens and salad plants as well as other low carb vegetables to help me with my shoppping costs for the fall and winter..as these will be the main sources of my meals until i can get this prediabetes under control.

i believe i will be much more dependent on my greenhoue now as well as of course my low carb over winter storage in ground vegetables like the jerusalem artichokes.  I am having to retrain my thinking and my gardening and my cooking and eating..so i see my greenhouse for this fall in a whole new light

Brenda - you might have to control your fruits, but you'll find that berries are nice and low carb.  You won't be able to pig out on them, but a handful is going to be able to fit in with virtually any low carb diet.  Not only that, you can have them in a bowl and smothered in cream... 

Burra wrote:
Brenda - you might have to control your fruits, but you'll find that berries are nice and low carb.  You won't be able to pig out on them, but a handful is going to be able to fit in with virtually any low carb diet.  Not only that, you can have them in a bowl and smothered in cream... 

Heck, smothered in cream is even better, because the cream slows the uptake of the glucose and prevents an insulin spike.

It seems that one variable that's missing from this thread is the cold-hardiness of the plants you're growing in a GH.  There are seed companies that specialize in cold-hardy varieties.  The combination of GH with cold-hardy vegetables would get a lot of families through the winter without having to heat their GH.

Also, it has been suggested by more than one person in the thread that a GH may not be 'permaculturally correct'.  Nothing could be further from the truth; it's a theme that runs all through the literature.

Perhaps it was called that by someone.I dont think there is any doubt whether its permiculture or not.Sustainable is a whole different angle and judging by what often passes for permaculture,the two are often distincly different which begs the question of how permanent an unsustainable model actually is.

Nothing is truly sustainable, well hydrogen might be, but in truly deep time I suspect that even that will prove unstable. The universe will eventually reach its end, either in a slow creeping cold death, or in a hot steamy gnab gib. If it is the latter I'll see you guys at Milliways.

Back on subject, even if you postulate that, in a thousand years time, we won't have fusion (which would take us for at least another 200,000 years as a species, given our current exponential growth rate in power consumption) green houses will take a whole lot less of what ever form of energy we are using to run our civilization than the alternative, so long as they are being used well (which probably means more of them per person than we have today). It's good that you have the kind of space and climate where you can depend on it to provide most of your food sustainably* but really you ought not to look down on people who are being more sustainable than average, and may be indefinitely sustainable, and doing it in a different way than you are. If everyone had to live in an area that could support them like yours supports you then everyone would move to such an area, and you would no longer have an area that can support you because you'd be sharing your acres with 30 other families from the city.

Even if you were living with no fossil fuel or oil or mining or any products derived from those practices you are still only as sustainable as civilization, because you are not the biggest man around, and a bigger man could take what you have if not for civilization holding him back with a chain and a feed trough.

*until a wild fire eats it up or a fungus attacks it

Sustainable doesn't mean a wink when all the resources are being drunk up by insane mindless children with giant straws.

I want to create something that can support me and the ones I love through to a time I won't be alive anymore.

Perhaps people with guns will come and take what I love. Perhaps the good people out there will help me and others and there will be a happy tomorrow.

I can't see the future, all I can do is build.

yes it is true that the plants that i'll be putting in my fall garden in my green house this fall will be many very cold hardy types of plants to give me the low carb vegetables i'll be needing this fall and winter ..I even have a pile of seeds already set aside for my fall planting into the greenhouse...including but not exclusive to lettuces, mescluns, snap peas, broccoli, cauliflower, other cole/cabbage/kale/ collar type plants, possibly a tomato or two and some peppers to last a little while, some herbs, a few carrots and beets amongst the green salady and greens to cook vegettables..if i'm able to eat carrots and beets by then..we'll see. my entire plan and way of thinking is changing as i'm seeing what is low carb and what is not, my outdoor garden is totally chucked full of things that i have  to limit my eating of now like my fruits, berries, potato, corn, carrot, beet, etc harvests..but i understand that i may be able to have small amounts of them in the future..so i'm not going to sweat it too much..just now i'm concentrating my efforts on planning for low carb vegetables ..as many as possible..to keep my grocery bills down as now i'll be buying meats that i usually wouldn't be spending  $ on..

I haven't read through every page here, but the big rationale for greenhouses from my vantage point, besides all-year gardening that the topic starter mentioned, is moderating chaotic weather patterns during the actual growing season.  Freak cold snaps or monsoon-style rain marathons are becoming the "new normal" in New England, for instance.  Last year the spring rains and the Home Depot tomato blight did a number on my garden.  Western MA got a late frost this year.  For me, I had already put tomatoes in the ground but it stayed above freezing by a degree or two.  But we've also had 90' days recently, far too early in the season.  Huge temperature swings wreak havoc with vegetable growth cycles.  Plants will bolt or wilt on you.  Heavy winds can also do damage.  And greenhouses have fewer animal pest problems.

Vegetable gardening is always going to be an intensive endeavor.  It is not against permaculture to grow annuals.  Annuals are just supposed to be closest to the house where they can be maintained by hand.  Look at earthships, for instance.  The greenhouse and the passive solar design are merged into one.  But obviously not everybody's in a position to have an earthship.


Using flimsy rowcovers and hoops might seem cheaper, but in my experience it just makes it hard to get in and water and the coverings just blow off in the wind and deteriorate.  And to whatever extent these coverings act as a greenhouse, you have very little control over maintaining a steady temperature as opposed to a greenhouse with automatic openers.

My backyard is heavily shaded by the house in the winter so I have been on the fence about whether or not to invest in a greenhouse, but even if it were not receiving enough sunlight to extend the growing season through the winter, it might make sense in order to moderate the ever more frequent weather extremes in the spring and fall.

Yes,as long as people are wasting the oil,we might as well not bother to feel guilty.Using unsustainable(I believe their are degrees here rather than either/or)technologies can(if used for the right plants)help a person develop a more permanent system quicker.They can also become an end in themselves(dependence).Ultimatly,depending on unsustainable technologies inhibits ones ability to develop a truly sustainable culture.Ive found the best way to discover cultural alternatives to industrial technologies is to avoid them.So while not getting the immediate gratification,one pioneers new life ways.Dependence on industry is a very vulnerable position these days IMO.

My point is that nothing that cannot feed a civilization is sustainable in a good way. If there is no big "S" Sustainable solution then it will involve a civilization, hunter gathering (like living off of native trees and weeds) Can Not support a civilization, ergo it is not Sustainable. Greenhouses need some energy and some sand and some wood to make for the most part, more energy and bauxite ore if you want it to last a bit longer. Energy is the only one that isn't available in a superabundance (or renewable pace) that can be used sustainably for the next few million years. Now, even if we don't have another ladder to jump to to make lots of energy available a greenhouse is still an energy capturing device. It makes solar radiation useful both for home temperature elevation as well as for human and animal consumption and composting/burning.  A family can theoretically subsist off of a tenth of an acre of intensively farmed land with a greenhouse with very few inputs (using humanure), can a family survive off that huntergathering? No, they most certainly cannot.

It takes land and energy to make and gather food, no matter what, Greenhouses will be a part of any capital "S" Sustainable solution, Huntergathering in the wild may not be. I sure hope it is, but of the two comparative modes of living greenhouses (done well) are more sustainable, not less.

Mt.goat wrote:
Ive found the best way to discover cultural alternatives to industrial technologies is to avoid them.So while not getting the immediate gratification,one pioneers new life ways.Dependence on industry is a very vulnerable position these days IMO.

It's all about priorities.  How many people here would intentionally make things more difficult for themselves by avoiding the use of greenhouses but have no problem logging into the internet and posting on the forums?  To me, that is misplaced priorities.

Appropriate technology, folks.

If you read any Bill McKibben, we're no longer living on Earth.  We're leaving on Eaarth, a planet that is more hostile to us, due to our influence.  Tools which can smooth out some of this variability are a good thing, IMHO.

Presumably, people's first priority should be survival.  Good earth-stewardship is a close second.  I have no intention to significantly reduce my survival odds just to score eco points.  Even in the best of times in the past, crop failures and famines were a routine occurrence.  Globalized food, as dysfunctional as it may be from an energy usage perspective, is a hedge against crop failure.  When food becomes exclusively local, it will also be vulnerable.  So homesteaders will have to use all available tools to protect their crops from failure.

Not sure how using a cell phone to post online makes greenhouses more or less sustainable??Anyway,I grew up with greenhouses but moved away from them because they made my life harder.Eventually I just ate feral domesticats and wild plants.Ive been eating 3 huge servings of greens a day since feb. and will until oct.(lambs quarters are almost big enough!)I still grow some storage root crops for winter(Im zone 6/7).So I basically gave up on greenhouses because they were so inefficient and with no running water(infrastrucure costs $ = get a job= not very efficient)it doesnt make sence for me to usurp natures functions.

Emerson,let me get this straight.Civilization requires unsustainable practices to exist but a practice isnt sustainable unless it can feed civilization ?therefore we must continue to use unsustainable practices to be sustainable?Personaly,Im not trying to solve the worlds problems here just lessen my dependence and support of industrial pollution ect...The planet has limitations and feeding everyone wont help them figure that out but I do believe we could feed everyone using techniques like multistory production models which are proven to produce more food per square foot without as many outside inputs but require a skilled population to manage and cant be mechanized so thus are not implimented. Options abound beyond convention.

I would like the positives and negatives of civilization weighed.

I would be fine with it if people were only aloud to have one child for a while.

Mt. Goat, it is not the cell phone that makes you unsustainable, it is the amount and quality of land, and what you are doing with it. You aren't intensively producing on it, you aren't keeping it as a nature sanctuary to act as ballast in the ecological storm that is a result of men, you are skimming off the very productive surface with out adding much back (from what I gather).

As for civilization, why don't you ask the next mammoth you see how great it is to have tribes of man running around? Oh that's right, because Man killed them all out. How about the next panda you see, ask it how much it wants to shuffle off the constraints of those damn representatives of civilization known as the WWF and be left with the peasantry?

Civilization is the leviathan that keeps man in line. With out it, we show how truly nasty we can be. Civilized life is just a prelude to the collapse, look at the most ecologically degraded places on the planet, 99 times out of 100 civilization has collapsed proceeding the event, the other 1% is legitimate environmental catastrophe, typically associated with inelegant legislational loopholes (Oil spill in the gulf), Fracking stupid labor management policies compounded by extreme wanton incompetence (Chernobyl), mistakes are made, but the biggest mistake ever is not having anyone there to discourage huge environmental risks from being taken, only civilization can look out for its own best interest and exert power over the risk takers.

I appreciate everyone's thoughts on greenhouses. I've been collecting materials for a couple of years now so I really need to decide if I'm going to do this or not. Right now I have raised beds which extend my season by a month or so (2 wks spring, 2 wks fall). Last year I put low tunnels over the raised beds just to see what would happen. We had fresh greens all winter long. The broccoli actually survived long enough to eat. I've declared it a success. I tried some early plantings but it seems germination is a problem in the early spring. So we'll be putting low tunnels on all the beds this fall, just to see how far we can nudge this idea.
I like this temporary set up. I can open the ends on a warm or sunny day to keep the veggies from cooking right there in the ground. As the days become shorter the plants don't grow very much but seem to be "on hold", staying nice and fresh for daily consumption.
Where I live spring is brief and HOT. So fall plantings and my little tunnels are the only way I've found to enjoy broccoli, peas and spinach. I'm still not sure a greenhouse is what I need so we'll see if it ever gets built.

is polycarbonate an oil product? my greenhouse is made of polycarbonate and extruded aluminum..

anyway we had 34 degrees this morning and there is a frost warning tonight..and unfortuately my greenhouse is empty as i have been begging my family to help me get it moved now for 4 months..and it still isn't moved..although the land where it will be moved is still prepared and ready for it.

so yeah..big suck factor here this year..hopefully my garden will be OK

Polycarbonate is made of oil, yes. However you should keep in mind that anything that costs $1000 can't be made of more than 6 barrels of oil, so if it saves you 6 or more barrels of oil then it is a net less oil intensive mode of living.

And its X amount of barrels more than using other more sustainable options!

As I said before, ignoring interactions between people is ignoring a big part of the picture. Not everyone can use zero, not using any is not necessarily any more sustainable than using lots. Its a complex picture and ignoring it and just rushing ahead is the plan that got us into the mess. I'll restate that in case you didn't get it, Oversimplification is responsible for the problem, more so that oil, more so than deforestation, more so than extinction, its a complex picture and ignoring that my saying the same simple thing over and over again is not the answer it's the problem.

The complexity is what civilized people use to hide the true costs of their consumption choices.Our inability to quantify and understand the effects of our actions is the smoke we hide the ramifications of our actions.A close relationship with the earth should be simple.It isnt but I believe the ultimate affect of stacking functions should be to simplify not complexify.IMO greenhouses complexify by furthering dependence on the complexity that is industrial civilization.

paul wheaton wrote:
I think that a greenhouse is an excellent idea for about 18% of the greenhouses that exist.   The weird thing is that so many greenhouses strike me as stupid.
Last year I was asked for my advice on a greenhouse location.  These people had dreams of eating veggies in the winter.  I pointed out that the trees to the south were conifers that were so dense that their greenhouse would be in the shade all winter.  They labeled me a "negative nelly" and built their precious greenhouse.  On a bright sunny day in november at about 10:30 in the morning I pointed out how their greenhouse was not only in the shade, but it would be lucky to get 15% of the available direct sunlight throughout the day.  And it would only be worse for the next two months.   
A similar thing a few years back.  With similar outcome. 
I suspect that half of all greenhouses built are built in the winter shade.    And the days are already so short then - blocking even half of the light is gonna make for a really lame crop.
Another thing about greenhouses is that you have split yourself away from the eco system.  By having a greenhouse at all, you are filling in the position of mother nature.  Everything that mother nature does to keep things in balance, you now have to do.  So when fungus or bugs or anything gets out of hand, it is now your job to deal with it.
I guess I felt the need to start this thread because everybody knows the upsides (food in winter) but very few people appear to be aware of the downsides.  Deep understanding of the downsides helps to mitigate them or at least decide to not put a lot of money and effort into something that, in the end, won't be worth it.
Just because I may be a negative nelly doesn't mean that these issues are less true. 
Anybody else have greenhouse issues that they would like to warn future greenhouse builders about?

Your list of stupid things about greenhouses I think conflates to a couple of more basic truths.  First, the idea of the natural benefits of seasonal and geographical eating.  It's the idea that it must be 'intended by nature' for, say, the Inuit of the Yukon to eat mostly blubber in the winter to increase bodily warmth, etc., and for the Amazonians to eat fruits and leafy things in the tropics to disperse heat in the body.  It's the notion that there's a reason that certain foods grow in each season. 

Maybe instead of building a greenhouse it would be far healthier and 'meant to be' to build a root cellar to store vegetables the same way nature 'stores' them naturally in the cold winter ground when we do not harvest beforehand, or to use a cold frame to modestly lengthen the growing season of autumn root vegetables and get a head start on early-spring vegetables.

Second, part of the stupidity of greenhouses may be the fact that we think of them as greenhouses instead of multi-function houses.  We build them separate from the house when they should be right up against the south face of the house as a passive solar heater and recreational sun room/enclosed porch and storage room.  As such, it may be a perceptual problem that prevents us from thinking about them more creatively and openly.

It's a tool, good grief, some places it doesn't make sense and some places it does.
For the naysayers be open to the idea that in some instances a greenhouse properly used could be a good idea.
For those that think an aboriginal existence is the way, just back how far on the aboriginal learning scale are we talking? Rock and loin cloth?
We're going to see some reduction in industrialization in the future but we aren't going all the way back in time, there will be a knowledge base that will exist from whatever stupid industrial unsustainable ideas we have utilized up to now.
A greenhouse may very well not be for you but for me I have proven it to be a reliable tool in my climatic area.
Summer solstice coming up think, I'll drink some wine and dance naked in the unsucky greenhouse  (fewer skeeters).

Brenda Groth wrote:
Ok it was just said that having a greenhouse isn't Permie..well the first book i ever read on permaculture..many years ago showed sketches and had info on building greenhouses..and was the first place i ever learned the idea of a chicken heated greenhouse..

The book was "Introduction to Permaculture" Bill Mollison..If you go to the Index you will find these references..Greenhouse as a cooling device page 82, as a shower area page 74, chicken heated page 153,essentials of 80 - 82,in cold climate 112 - 114,siting of 64,

pages 81,82 (window),107,113,116 (coldframe), show beautiful line drawings of use of greenhouse or other glass areas ...and this was one of the original permaculture teaching books.

so I don't understand the statment that greenhouses aren't Permie..that was one of the first impressions I got from reading the book and i had just purchased my greenhouse a few years prior so i was thrilled at more information on using it on my property.

Actually this book was my only information on permaculter for a long time..and i found it fascinating and very helpful even though it was not written for our climate i was able to adapt it to my climate by using the common sense information that was available in it to make a lovely property here around our home..it also encouraged me to glass in my front porch and to provide a shade porch on the rear of my house that we put in after the housefire..using the common sense beliefs and adapting to the climater here in Michigan

Yeah, that's where I first saw it, too.  It was amazing how much utility he could get out of one of those things.  It completely changed the way I thought about greenhouses.  I still think of that as the ideal, although for one reason or another it's hard to achieve that ideal.

TCLynx wrote:
Think of a greenhouse as a tool that if the collapse happens, may not be easily replaced but that does not mean it shouldn't be used while it is available.  Heck, what if a climate shift happens along with the collapse, having some greenhouse plants might suddenly make you the new provider of suddenly climate appropriate plants.  But for most of us, a greenhouse is often a place for starting nursery stock and other things that need closer observation and attention.

Good point.  Regardless of other factors, it can be a terrific insurance policy against all kinds of unwanted/unplanned things that can happen in an outdoor garden.

Robert Ray wrote:
For those that think an aboriginal existence is the way, just back how far on the aboriginal learning scale are we talking? Rock and loin cloth?
We're going to see some reduction in industrialization in the future but we aren't going all the way back in time, there will be a knowledge base that will exist from whatever stupid industrial unsustainable ideas we have utilized up to now.

Are you familiar with Roy underhill? He does a Show called The Woodwright's Shop on PBS where he does traditional woodworking with old tools, but modern adhesives. I took a workshop from him a number of years ago and he regaled us with an anecdote about this: Every once in a while someone will call or write to complain about how his show is supposed  to be set in the past but he uses modern adhesives that weren't available before the age of oil, his reply is that his show is set in the future. But even looking at the woodwright's shop you will see many tools that were made with coal power, which arguably is much worse than oil power from an environmental standpoint.

The "Woodwright Shop" good examples of what is possible without electricity. Quality tools well cared for can last several generations.
There is no reason a well crafted greenhouse could not do the same.

Oh my. 

Well, I deleted stuff again.  I guess this thread is a sort of anger bait. 

I would like to remind folks about my sensitivities to what "be nice" means.  And that suggesting that anybody on this site is anything less than perfect is gonna get deleted.  And this includes qualifying other people's statements.  I think it is fair to say "my opinion is the opposite" but a statement that says "your statement is false" will only get deleted. 

I would also like to express my gratitude to those that can continue to travel a smooth path when others are not.

Thanks!

Mt.goat wrote:
The complexity is what civilized people use to hide the true costs of their consumption choices.Our inability to quantify and understand the effects of our actions is the smoke we hide the ramifications of our actions.A close relationship with the earth should be simple.It isnt but I believe the ultimate affect of stacking functions should be to simplify not complexify.IMO greenhouses complexify by furthering dependence on the complexity that is industrial civilization.

Why would civilized people use complexity to hide the truth when it is many orders of magnitude easier to rail against complexity and then proceed to ignore all of the factors that do not fit an a priori view of the world? Arguably that behavior is what got us into this mess, burning oil wasn't complicated it was simple, burn the oil, get energy, use it. It wasn't until the complexity of the situation and the gases in the air were studies and accepted that it became apparent that there was a problem, or the complexity of the logistics of getting oil if peak oil is the concern.

Ignoring complexity in order to pass off a politically expedient point as a universal truth is the hallmark of such pillars of intellectual integrity as Glen "the government is out to get you" Beck and Andy "conservapedia" Schlafly. The world is more complex than we could ever hope to understand, lifetimes have been spent studying water, one of the simplest things there is, and still every year someone discovers something new about it.

    Its strange i agree with Emerson White on this thread, i have been disagreeing with him on others.
    I agree that if we don't have rules we will be back where we where when King Arthur had to set up the round table to save damsels and poor villagers from the dungeons of unreasonable overlords and civilization as it is now is better than having none with its terrible faults, not civilivation as it is if we obey the religiouse  trying for their own laws. I saw a program on some today, they get really heavy on others, and simplify soem things to the point of getting very cruel on some point while they are maybe better than governments on one or two others they are impresionantly tyranical.
      I agree about us being mutually dependent and I agree about complexity, i have met those who want to simplify and some very important points started to get missed out, humans are so clever and also o given to getting their knickers in a twist, I think it is our cleverness that makes us uncautiouse so then we confuse everything and allowing simplicity guarantees that we humans stop even trying to bring all the points that bare on anything to bare on it .
        I have a friend who says we are clever because we had to work out all the complex thoughts of other humans. so as not to be killed by them i suppose. We can manage complexity  we were given a brain we don't need to simplify. One of the things we are worst at is seeing that the other person has a brain too.
  Sometimes those who ask for simplicity are those who want others to leave every thing in their hands. I have met those with a very complicated network of arguements to back up their own points of view, a network of arguements that was in no way inclusive of all points but cleverly allowed them to argue anything they wanted, ask other to be simple, clever gambit.

  Also, If i understand it right part of a gurus message is people are complicated so you need not get bored. THat goes for things like agriculture to .as far as I'm concerned. You just try to throw your weight into things instead of being passive and simple,. By which i mean pull your weight and events will get complicated which will stop boredom ever coming to your door, and this seems to be an interesting point. agri rose macaskie.

Well I waded through this entire thread and managed to find it more than 18% useful/interesting.  I did see but later couldn't find a post about the USDA high tunnel pilot study http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?contentidonly=true&contentid=2009/12/0617.xml .  Lots of hoop jumping (punny!) but depending on your state you can get most of the cost paid by the gov'ment (in their infinite wisdom) of a fairly large high tunnel/hoop house.   I've so far manged to span the hurdles but am still wondering if I want such disposable tech... and this is coming from someone who lives in a greenhouse with an attached house (yeah the greenhouse is >10% bigger).  Currently I'm still leaning toward yes.

rose macaskie wrote:
     Its strange i agree with Emerson White on this thread, i have been disagreeing with him on others.

I was bound to get something right eventually