#crop failure

October came and went like a lightening bolt, my apologies it's been a bit since I posted, things have gotten a bit crazy this way with some personal things. With luck now the October shuffles just about done and the November tubslide will be a bit gentler.

Onto some urban homesteading and otherwise~

I'm going to have to restart my fall seeds. Unfortunately, there was a bit of a situation which killed off my seed table and started plants entirely. For the most part, it's sorted, but I'll have to begin my fall and winter crops from scratch and hope there's time for em to grow. Otherwise I'll need to figure some other crops instead. Probably more chicken food or flowers/peas instead.

Thankfully, the already established in ground crops were okay for the most part. Some a bit stressed or stunted from lack of consistent watering.

Sweet potato has already started flowering now, i really didn't get any greenery from it so far (mayby a pound), so I'm just gonna let it keep going for now. When it msotly dies back I'll dig them out.

The sunchoke has now begun flowering, it's rather different than the last flowering I thought it did. Mayby a regular sunflower got mixed in? I did plant them around the time the regular sunflowers started sprouting.

I'm pretty excited to try the Tubers out, if there's enough for a decent harvest. Otherwise I'm taking them and spreading to another bit of the garden for fill in and propogation.

I can confirm, we do have a rooster. His name is Heihei. He's not gone through full second molt, but we've seen his curly feather, now hear his crowing and have caught him doing what roosters do lol.

Looks like I may get to try out hatching after all :)

No new layers so far, but hoping soon :)

Spotted this feather, which i believe belongs to one of the local woodpeckers. (I didn't take it, not allowed where I live)

Also have started spotting hummingbirds more locally and regularly. The parrots have returned again, though they aren't currently visiting us (no sunflowers yet ) and I think we've had a few female cardinals visit the lambs quarter plant I'm letting go to seed. Haven't noticed much in new bug species.

I got to learn how to change tires on a dolly this month. It was quite a bit easier than expected, cost less than $30 and gave new life to a good tool.

Thats it for now, ive got some chores to do and hopefully some time to get garden set up a bit :) new photos and updates coming ASAP!

Excerpt from this story from Grist:

According to the United Nations, the worst famine of the twenty-first century is unfolding in the Horn of Africa. For months, a climate-change-fueled drought of historic proportions and supply chain disruptions caused by the war in Ukraine have combined to cause severe food shortages in Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya.

Famine experts expect the situation to deteriorate through the fall and winter. A recent report from the Food Security and Nutrition Working Group of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, a trade block representing East African countries, found that more than 25 million people across the region could be experiencing dire food insecurity by early 2023.

“The drought this year was both the most extensive on record and the most intense on record,” Chris Funk, the director of the Climate Hazards Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told Grist. He said a combination of climate change and La Niña weather patterns have produced five consecutive dry seasons, which has all but destroyed the domestic food supply in Somalia and its neighboring countries.

I have just had my worst Summer home vegie growing season ever.

A wet, cool Spring that dragged into Summer and an early Autumn cool down has left me with loads of plants that either never set fruit, aborted fruit or started die back before maturity. I’ve had failures with pumpkins, watermelon, rock melons, cucumbers, capsicum, onions and scarlet runner beans. Tomatoes have had a reduced yield too.

Lots of resources have gone into crops that have literally produced nothing this Summer thanks to a late start and early finish to Summer growing conditions.

I’m currently ripping out the wasted Summer veg plants and stuffing them into the compost bin, out of my sight.

August 23, 2020

Excerpt:

Climate change will increase the risk of simultaneous crop failures across the world's biggest corn-growing regions and lead to less of the nutritionally critical vegetables that health experts say people aren't getting enough of already, scientists warn.

Two new studies published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences look at different aspects of the global food supply but arrive at similarly worrisome conclusions that reiterate the prospects of food shocks and malnutrition with unchecked global warming. While developing tropical countries would likely be hardest hit, the destabilizing financial effects could reach all corners of the globe, the authors say.

One paper analyzed corn—or maize—the world's most produced and traded crop, to project how climate change will affect it across the major producing regions. Much of the world's corn goes into feeding livestock and making biofuels, and swings in production can ripple through global markets, leading to price spikes and food shortages, particularly for the 800 million people living in extreme poverty.  

The researchers found significant differences in corn yield depending on how high global temperatures rise.

An increase of 4 degrees Celsius—close to where the current greenhouse gas emissions trajectory would take us by the end of this century—could cut U.S. corn production by nearly half. If global warming is instead held to 2°C (the goal of the Paris climate agreement is to stay below that level) the projected loss in U.S. production would be closer to 18 percent, the researchers found.

The second study published Monday looked at how environmental changes brought on by climate change could impact the production and quality of vegetables and legumes—foods that government nutrition guidelines and nutritionists urge people to eat more of.

Researchers led by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine looked at 174 studies, across 40 countries, published since 1975. The authors say it is the first attempt to systematically examine how climate-induced environmental changes could impact yields of vegetables and legumes around the world.

While previous research has shown that increased levels of carbon dioxide could boost some vegetable and legume yields, the new study finds that any benefits will be offset by the negative effects of increased ozone, less water availability and increased salinity.