Garden Myths

4-5 days is not enough watering for outdoor vegetables. Seedlings need watering every day or better 2x a day. Use hose or sprinkler drip irrigation doesn’t work with seedlings Also timing is critical you need to plant at the right time for your local area otherwise seeds will . Light level is important too, full Sun IS best but requires constant irrigation for best results. Research a lot ask your neighbors and keep trying Try reading https://www.gardenmyths.com/. There are some decent YouTube channels like urban farmer curtis stone but YouTube is kind of a slow repository of info. You need to watch a lot of videos to learn bits

This fellow cuts through a lot of the bullshit on his blog/newsletter. https://www.gardenmyths.com/ Unfortunately, there’s often a lack of good evidence except from industrial agriculture.

Unfortunately, this is a myth. Too many plants are needed to make any appreciable difference. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/03/indoor-plants-clea… https://www.gardenmyths.com/garden-myth-born-plants-dont-purify-air https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/11/houseplants-dont-pu…

Can plants be used to clean pollutants from the atmosphere in a space station? Maybe not: https://www.gardenmyths.com/garden-myth-born-plants-dont-purify-air/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/03/indoor-plants-clea…

I'm not the person you asked but I try to keep my gems in bookmarks, would love to share some. Obviously I don't know your interests so take it for what you will. I have many more than I'll post here if you want some. Some of this came from HN, some from elsewhere. This website lists the first references to some cultural icons on Usenet (for example the first time AIDS was ever discussed, first mention of a new TV cartoon "The Simpsons", etc.) http://www.eightyeightynine.com/culture/80susenet.html The Public Domain Review, a collection and analysis of interesting stuff in the public domain https://publicdomainreview.org/ David Rumsey Historical Map Collection. I have spent many hours browsing the incredible content here. https://www.davidrumsey.com/ Artvee. Free, high quality art. https://artvee.com/ Restoration Mustang. A high quality long term journal of the restoration of a classic Mustang. Think like an /r/diy project but with way more detail and over a longer time scale. https://restorationmustang.com/ The Renegade Gardener. Highly opinionated no-bullshit gardening advice. I especially love the "Don't Do That" section. https://renegadegardener.com/ Garden Myths. There's a lot of misinformation and old wives' tales in gardening, this website cuts the crap. https://www.gardenmyths.com/ Million Short is a search engine that lets you cut out the million (or 10,000 or 100,000) top results from a search, really good for finding gems. It also has an option for…

> Would growing a lot of plants help perhaps? It doesn't help much unless there are many plants in a small contained area. All the studies, including NASA ones, are done in sealed environments, as soon as you test them in real life you basically need to fill the room with plants. Air filtering is hard to do right, consume a lot of energy and/or requires filters that have to be changed often. If we were logical we'd straight up ban cars in our city centers, which would remove most of the pollution in 1st world countries' cities. ----- from : https://www.gardenmyths.com/garden-myth-born-plants-dont-purify-air/ The NASA study shows that plants remove a small amount of certain chemicals from the air. A 1500 sq ft home would need around 400 large plants to remove most of the tested chemicals–something that is not practical. Reports that list the best plants for the job are probably not valid lists. The microbes in the soil of the pot are more efficient at removing chemicals than the plants themselves. Reporters who write about the ability of plants to remove pollutants either have not read the reference they quote (most likely case) or they have cherry picked the data that suits their story. Most have probably just reported what previous reporters said. The original reporters made the following mistakes: ignored the lab conditions used to carry out the experiments used the very best number in the report, ie 90%, and extrapolated it to all plants and all…

Bats don't need mosquitoes, either. https://www.gardenmyths.com/myth-bats-eat-mosquitoes/

> They absorb carbon while growing, but release it in decay Can you backup this claim? I haven't been able to find anything conclusive. This is the furthest I've gone: https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/9089/does-organic-dec… https://www.gardenmyths.com/forests-remove-co2/ Have there been any reputable studies on the subject? Is this the consensus?

https://www.gardenmyths.com/houseplants-increase-oxygen-levels/ did some looking into this possibility. The TL;DR is that you're not likely to have enough plants to make a significant difference in terms of CO2/oxygen. Doesn't mean there's no positive effect, but it's probably not due to oxygen levels.

Plants produce oxygen when they grow, and you would need to grow about 8 pounds a day to supply oxygen for one human. See https://www.gardenmyths.com/houseplants-increase-oxygen-levels/

I have been skeptical about these claims in the past. I really like this tear down of the previous claims[0]. Since this articles has some specificity, chloroform and benzene, with a mechanism it seems like some more solid ground, instead of the vague claims of pollutants. This may be a step in the right direction though I must admit this is outside of my expertise. [0] https://www.gardenmyths.com/garden-myth-born-plants-dont-purify-air/

Air filters seem pretty efficient; it's just a fan and a filter. If you exchange the air as well, you're sending clean air to the environment. (Though it has more CO2.) For oxygen, fast-growing indoor plants might help a little, but apparently you'd need a lot of them. [1] > Plants produce 22 L for every 150 g of growth (ref 2). They would need to increase in weight by 3.75 Kg (8 pounds), each day, to produce the oxygen used by one person. > Keep in mind that plants grow slowly. Adding 3.75 Kg to your houseplants every day would require a huge number of plants. Carbon capture: not as easy as it sounds. You'll need plenty of sunlight. Grow lamps? What would you do with eight pounds of plants per day? Hopefully some parts are edible, closing the cycle a little. I've heard that people growing cannabis will buy CO2, so if there were some other way to capture it then they'd probably take it. [1] https://www.gardenmyths.com/houseplants-increase-oxygen-levels/

> Kamal Meattle even claims that a handful of large plants are enough to sustain a person without any external input! This is wishful thinking. If you run the numbers, it's clear that to produce enough oxygen for even just one person you need a lot more plants than anyone can reasonably grow inside their homes. You would need 8 lbs of new growth per day to match the amount that a person consumes. > The average adult, when resting, inhales and exhales about 7 or 8 liters of air per minute. That totals about 11,000 liters of air per day. > Inhaled air is about 20-percent oxygen. Exhaled air is about 15-percent oxygen. Therefore, about 5-percent of breathed air is consumed in each breath. That air is converted to carbon dioxide. So, as far as how much air is actually used, human beings take in about 550 liters of pure oxygen per day. https://www.sharecare.com/health/air-quality/oxygen-person-consume-a-d… > Plants produce 22 L for every 150 g of growth. They would need to increase in weight by 3.75 Kg (8 pounds), each day, to produce the oxygen used by one person. https://www.gardenmyths.com/houseplants-increase-oxygen-levels/