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The art of growing infinite food

The art of growing infinite food

Plus, some crazy natural phenomena

Alex Melvin
November 23, 2022

In today's email:

🌱 The big idea: Use compounding to grow infinite food
🤏 The small idea: The ultimate soil testing lab guide
🌎 Snippets from the web: a peacock spider and other crazy nature finds

The Big Idea

🍎 Compounding Permaculture

The average mature apple tree produces over 40,000 calories per year.

The apple tree in your dreams? Unfortunately, you burn more calories thinking about it than it will ever feed you.

There's a concept in finance called compound interest. If you've never studied it, I'm convinced it's a form of modern magic. I keep a compound interest calculator on my phone to remind me of its power.

Compound interest, in a nutshell, is the exponential growth of your assets.

Here's an example:

I put $1000 in an account with a 10% annual rate of return. After one year, I get $100. If I add nothing to the account, how much do I have in 50 years? A couple thousand bucks?

After 50 years, my $1000 turns into $117,390.

Compounding money is great, but the principle applies to other areas of life as well.

James Clear has a great analogy using his "1% better every day for a year" example. If you get 1% better at riding a bike every day, you end up over 3,700% better at the end of a year.

This isn't a financial newsletter, it's a gardening newsletter. So why am I talking about compounding?

Because it's easy to get caught up trying to create the perfect backyard garden. I'm guilty of it - I put off planting a pollinator garden because I wanted the best possible flowers for bees and butterflies in my area.

Bees don't care about perfect, they just want food. The same is true for you.

Planting one apple tree might sound like a waste of time. You can buy apples at the grocery store easily enough. There's no immediate gratification in pulling an apple off your backyard tree the day after you plant it.

But here's the thing: that one tree isn't really just one tree. Every two years, you can propagate that one apple tree into 10 apple trees.

40,000 calories from a single tree quickly becomes 400,000 calories from 10 trees. In a couple more years, that's 4,000,000 calories, or enough to feed multiple families.

Obviously, apples are only the placeholder here. Substitute any of the following for your perfect backyard harvest:

Hazelnuts: 19,000 calories/shrub
Plums: 25,000 calories/tree
Blackberries: 2,500 calories/shrub
Peaches: 30,000 calories/tree
White Sapote: 67,500 calories/tree

If you're feeling the itch to start or expand your garden, now's the best time to do it. Order those trees and get them in the ground this winter. You'll be ready to start harvesting a little bit next year and a lotta bit the year after that.

The Small Idea:

🍄 The Ultimate Guide to Soil Testing Labs

Figuring out what's beneath your feet isn't critical, but it is helpful.

I like to say gardening is less about growing plants than it is about growing soil. Strong soil takes time to build, and as we discussed in compounding, it's helpful to get started early.

I made a list of cheap soil testing labs for every state in the U.S. (or the best place to ship them if your state doesn't have a good option).

Many of these services cost less than $20, so it won't put a big dent in your pocket.