this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2025
952 points (98.1% liked)
196
5368 readers
742 users here now
Be sure to follow the rule before you head out.
Rule: You must post before you leave.
Other rules
Behavior rules:
- No bigotry (transphobia, racism, etc…)
- No genocide denial
- No support for authoritarian behaviour (incl. Tankies)
- No namecalling
- Accounts from lemmygrad.ml, threads.net, or hexbear.net are held to higher standards
- Other things seen as cleary bad
Posting rules:
- No AI generated content (DALL-E etc…)
- No advertisements
- No gore / violence
- Mutual aid posts are not allowed
NSFW: NSFW content is permitted but it must be tagged and have content warnings. Anything that doesn't adhere to this will be removed. Content warnings should be added like: [penis], [explicit description of sex]. Non-sexualized breasts of any gender are not considered inappropriate and therefore do not need to be blurred/tagged.
Also, when sharing art (comics etc.) please credit the creators.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact us on our matrix channel or email.
Other 196's:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Can’t grow anything but grass because they stripped off all the topsoil from the land that used to be a farm.
If you want a garden you need to buy soil
edit: looks like I'm wrong.
Do people in this thread really think the developer took the topsoil and sold it to someone else?
Bitch, please. Topsoil isn't valuable enough to strip and truck somewhere. The tiny layer we humans can grow food in is just that thin in a large part of North America.
Deal with it.
They do though. They rip it all up and sell it off when they’re doing construction.
Source: used to work in commercial landscaping. Which on new jobsites involves bringing in new soil to replace the soil that’s gone.
That being said, there are places in the US where there isn’t much topsoil to begin with, it’s true.
Yeah but they don't cart it off as part of some nefarious scheme to deprive home owners of the ability to grow their own produce.
Construction regulations dictate requirements for hardness and consistency. They test these metrics before construction can begin. The regulations have these requirements so peoples houses don't... you know... fall over?
If you just bulldoze whatever and make the ground flat it's going to be full of organic material that will decay and slump over time.
They have to remove that top soil, and of course it has some value so it can be sold rather than dumped.
Euuuh when you build a house fondation yes. But we're talking about the garden next to it, right?
For a one off house yes, for developments of multiple blocks they just strip the lot.
Well, you're not supposed to just plop houses on the ground, you should dig foundations on a stable substrate, and then build the house. It might require a bit more work of course.
jokes on you, here in the south the top soil is old swap and sometimes actual farm top soil, it is indeed bagged and sold off sometimes
Grass (the trimmed always green lawn type) is more demanding than many other crops. If the grass is growing there, then the topsoil is good enough for some other things too. Also the topsoil is something you can develop, especially on such small scale as personal garden. Make compost, grow less demanding plants first nad your soil will get better. You can grow things on sand mixed with a bit of compost.
Even if you have soil, in a whole lot of cities/municipalities/counties... there are zoning restrictions on growing certain amounts and kinds of plants/vegetables.
And HOAs. They all have their own restrictions as well.
Wanna collect rainwater?
Regulations on that too.
Wanna start a compost bin?
Well your neighbor can complain it smells bad in the summer. Might attract dangerous critters.
Hell, probably just laying down a sufficient amount of top soil might be enough to get a visit from an HOA rep or a county zoning wonk.
As a German this amount of regulations, rules and bureaucracy astonishes me :D
Im Germany, there might be similar regulations for collecting rain water or having a compost depending on your commune.
Yes, but everybody ignores them
I’m not denying this happens in some places, but it’s not universal. I live in the suburbs and grow veggies during the summer. The state I live in has “right to garden” laws that prevent a lot of HOA restrictions. My city also has a rain barrel program to encourage their use and offers discounts on barrels.
Bad smells are a reasonable point though.
Imissions of all kind (noise, smell) should be regulated. If you put a compost bin at the edge of your property, your neighbor should have a right to demand its removal.
That's just a common law tort called nuisance.
Compost helps, storage is the issue. I'm ok with it open but not okay with the timber rattlers, cotton mouths and copperheads different scavengers would attract.
Compost helps but you need at least a year to get good compost and you need way more than an individual household can supply.
Once you start growing plants, you'll have much more compostable material than just the kitchen waste. You can also compost grass and tree leaves.
Yes, I've been discussing it with a neighbor. Storage is the current challenge. We need an old freezer with the coils gutted (snakes love coils, anyone with a boa or python for any length of time and a sofa can tell you!) or something. We're looking.
That's actually adorable (when it's not wild/poisonous) and reminds me of how Odo's quarters had interesting objects he liked to take the form of
I miss my snake.
raised beds, kinda silly like a fridge in a heated house in a snow storm kinda way but they do work
I figured they took the soil from digging the foundation and spread it around the yard in order to grade it and that's why the street is lower than the yard.
They do, but after they strip most of the good stuff off the top. Which kind of makes sense because it’s gonna be ruined by the construction. Top soil is only about 5-10 inches deep in most places and pretty compressible so any foundation is going to be deeper.
The real crime is plowing up farmland for tract housing.