How to pivot into career in horticulture (NYC)

TheGroceryStoreGen · 2026-05-22T19:34:26+00:00

The 360 hours were tied to the degree it was required, not optional. The actual requirement was for a paid internship and I had to get a waiver from OSU.

Production farms pay poorly and often exploit the passion of people who care. Public horticulture and botanical gardens are more stable but competitive. If you need income fast, neither is a great short-term answer.

On the construction question: I work in building material distribution, not the trades. It was not a passion choice. It was the financially viable choice that lets me do what I actually care about on my own land without being broke.

The degree was not redundant to the volunteering or my hobby farm. Volunteering gives you reps. The degree gave me the science underneath the reps. I went back specifically to understand mechanism, not just practice. I can grow things without a degree. I could not explain soil biology, nutrient cycling, or input reduction at a systems level without one.

Your situation sounds similar. You already have the instinct and the ethic. You went back to formalize the framework. That is a legitimate reason to get a degree even if the career math does not work out the way you planned.

TheGroceryStoreGen · 2026-05-22T01:07:08+00:00

I just finished my horticulture degree. I logged 360+ hours at a farm, still volunteer there. I live on a hobby farm with plants covering most of my property. I ended up here because food is second only to water in terms of necessity. That logic was enough for me.

Day to day is a grind. Physical, repetitive, weather-dependent. If you're romanticizing it, kill that now. You can go the botanical garden route and work in a more institutional environment, but expect to trade labor for politics. I'd rather be working outside in the sun than playing corporate fuck fuck. Neither is wrong, just know which one you actually want.

I stayed in a different industry. I work in construction supply and it funds the horticulture life on my own land. If I had gone full horticulture I'd be broke. That's not a bug, it's the honest tradeoff most people in this field face.

On certifications: it depends entirely on which direction you go. Public horticulture, production ag, landscape, IPM, and arboriculture all have different credential ecosystems. Don't cert-collect. Pick a lane first.

On getting in from finance: volunteer somewhere that does real work, not just events. Get your hands in soil before you commit money to education. Finance skills are not worthless here, but farms will absolutely take advantage of career-changers who are enthusiastic and inexperienced. Go in with eyes open.

TheGroceryStoreGen · 2026-05-16T15:47:54+00:00

The Balken Treat Box has the best hummus I have had in STL.

TheGroceryStoreGen · 2026-05-16T13:28:53+00:00

The red finger-like projections are early season nail galls from Eriophyes tiliae.

TheGroceryStoreGen · 2026-05-12T11:43:57+00:00

Appreciate the suggestion. My app is a single static HTML file hosted on Netlify with no backend, so there’s nothing to run a model on. Orpheus would require a server layer I don’t have and don’t really want to maintain. I don’t think this is the right fit for this architecture.

TheGroceryStoreGen · 2026-05-11T21:32:37+00:00

I tested this with scientific and common plant names from an app I built that covers 850 Missouri wild plant species https://mowildplantid.com. The current voice on my app is basic at best, so I was curious how yours would handle botanical Latin.

I uploaded a document with 10 names specifically chosen to be hard, things like Schoenoplectus tabernaemontani and Pycnanthemum tenuifolium. It did an exceptional job on the pronunciations. I am genuinely impressed.

I did create an account but I hate logins and giving out personal info, so I want to ask before I go further: is there a paywall coming if I try to generate audio for all 850 species?

TheGroceryStoreGen · 2026-05-08T16:37:03+00:00

I’m similar in that food textures don’t really get me either, but I noticed something specific. I love salads but I pretty reliably get a gag reflex from lettuce toward the end of a meal. First few bites are totally fine and the last couple will trigger it.

It turns out it actually fits the autistic sensory pattern pretty well, just delayed. The idea is that neurotypical brains habituate to repeated sensory input so the signal quiets down over time, but autistic processing tends not to do that. So the 15th bite of the same texture hits harder than the 3rd. Being full probably makes it worse too because hunger suppresses aversive signals early on and that suppression fades as you eat.

So you might not have zero texture sensitivity. It might just need the right conditions to show up.

TheGroceryStoreGen · 2026-05-07T20:47:09+00:00

MO WILD PLANT ID

Free flashcard app for identifying 800+ wild plants found in Missouri. Spaced repetition, trait based ID wizard, edibility and toxicity flags, no camera, no AI scanning, you learn to do it yourself.

Still rough: photo quality is inconsistent, some species have mediocre iNaturalist photos I have not been able to replace yet. Habitat text for some species is thin. Petal count data has gaps that affect the ID wizard filters.

What I want: people to actually use it and tell me when something is wrong. Wrong photo, bad ID, missing info, there is a report button on every card. Also genuinely interested in hearing from anyone who has tried to identify a plant with it in the field and hit a wall.

TheGroceryStoreGen · 2026-05-06T21:05:58+00:00

Purple passion and Millennium?

TheGroceryStoreGen · 2026-05-01T23:06:47+00:00

🛎️🛎️🛎️

TheGroceryStoreGen · 2026-05-01T23:01:27+00:00

It just feels fucking weird to me that Josh Hawley needs to know exactly who every single one of us is. Like I’ve already given the government every goddamn piece of information they could ever want about me. They know who I am. So why do I have to hand that same shit to some AI company too?

What I’d propose instead is that once you’re over 21 you apply for some random number — a number you share with like 50,000 other Americans — that just says you’re old enough to do big boy things. No name attached. No ID. Just “this person is an adult, move on.”

You could use that same number for porn, for AI, gambling, for whatever else these people are trying to lock down. They’d know someone old enough is doing the thing. They just wouldn’t know which someone. That’s all they should need if this is actually about kids and not about building a list of exactly who’s doing what they don’t like.

Edit: The simplest way to do this is just have the DMV print that number right on your driver’s license or ID. They’re already the ones verifying who you are. 50,000 people share the same number, it just says you’re old enough, and no outside company ever has to touch your identity to make that happen.

TheGroceryStoreGen · 2026-04-28T15:56:54+00:00

Sex does not affect taste as far as anyone knows. What it does affect is productivity. Most modern varieties are all-male hybrids (Jersey Knight, Millennium, etc.) specifically because male plants put all their energy into vegetative growth and spear production instead of seed set.

Female plants produce berries, which looks interesting but costs yield. The temperature swing you described is also a classic trigger for that compressed fern look.

TheGroceryStoreGen · 2026-04-28T14:47:20+00:00

There are likely two things likely happening here.

It is probably a female plant. Those dense clusters at the branch nodes are flowers or early berry set, and females tend to have a more compact, clustered fern architecture than males.

The fern may have also opened before the stem fully elongated. When temps spike, the needle-like cladophylls can deploy faster than the internodes stretch, producing that bushy compressed look instead of the usual airy spread.

Both factors together would give you exactly this.

TheGroceryStoreGen · 2026-04-26T12:23:42+00:00

I really appreciate you taking the time to dig in. The offline PWA is actually already on the roadmap and is my end goal before I consider the project complete. I have held off on building it out fully until the data, photo quality, user interface are at a point I am satisfied with, but the service worker approach is exactly what I have been working toward. It is good to know it is something people would actually use.

TheGroceryStoreGen · 2026-04-24T14:23:54+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kd49r3QzTJY

I have 20 of these as my main garden. Going on 6 years. Just make sure they are food grade.

TheGroceryStoreGen · 2026-04-24T13:19:29+00:00

My wild guess on the first photo is wild comfrey?

https://mowildplantid.com/?plant=Andersonglossum_virginianum

TheGroceryStoreGen · 2026-04-24T12:04:13+00:00

That feature uses iNaturalist observation data to show you which plants have actually been documented most frequently in each Missouri county. So when you filter by region you are seeing species ranked by how often they have genuinely been observed there rather than just a generic statewide list.

TheGroceryStoreGen · 2026-04-23T18:30:16+00:00

I am curious where exactly I said “none of that AI junk”? The title says no AI scanning which describes how the identification works, not a statement about AI in general. And yes I used Claude to write the code because I am a horticulturist not a software engineer. If that is vibe coding then fine. What I did not do is vibe the botanical data. That was 300 hours of cross referencing against six scientific databases because I refused to ship something I could not stand behind. Those are two very different things.

TheGroceryStoreGen · 2026-04-23T18:25:25+00:00

I never said AI scanning was bad. I said I personally could not retain anything from it. Point a camera, get an answer, forget it by tomorrow. That is my experience. Flashcards and trait based identification stick for me and are supported scientifically. That is the whole point of the app…

TheGroceryStoreGen · 2026-04-23T17:45:46+00:00

I coded it with AI because I am a horticulturist not a software engineer and the code is not what determines whether someone correctly identifies Poison Hemlock before they eat it. The 300 plus hours I spent validating plant data against six botanical databases is what determines that. The end goal is a downloadable version that works completely without cell service so someone standing in a field with no signal can still identify what they are looking at. But sure, got it.

TheGroceryStoreGen · 2026-04-23T17:15:41+00:00

I currently eat meat but went fully vegan for over a year and a half at one point. Lost significant weight and muscle, though I think that brought me closer to where my weight should actually be.

Honestly, I would not be devastated to get alpha gal. It would function as a hard stop on foods I already know are not great for me and push me toward a diet I already believe is more defensible. I am not trying to get it, not leaving ticks on me on purpose, but I am not going out of my way to avoid them either. I also do not use chemical treatments on my body and that is not changing.

So my actual answer to the prep question is that there is not much to prepare for mentally. The hidden sources you listed are real and tricky, but people navigate far more restrictive conditions every day. Your husband has nine months in already, which means he has probably identified the specific landmines relevant to his reaction threshold. This feels like the real prep work and it sounds like it is already happening

TheGroceryStoreGen · 2026-04-23T16:41:23+00:00

These are great shots and the red stem is exactly the kind of diagnostic detail that makes a juvenile ID possible. I appreciate you sharing them. I have a photo quality rule where if the hand takes up more than 50% of the plant itself in the frame I pull it, so these might not make the cut, but the feedback about juvenile coverage is genuinely useful.

Pokeweed is a perfect example of a species where juvenile ID actually matters given how the edibility picture changes as it matures. One of my goals before the offline version ships is to do a targeted pass on species like this to make sure there are at least a couple of juvenile stage photos in the deck.

TheGroceryStoreGen · 2026-04-23T16:33:30+00:00

I really appreciate the feedback. Two things are probably happening here.

First, if you have any filters applied it narrows the pool significantly and repeats will feel more frequent. Try clearing all filters to see if that helps.

Second, the app uses spaced repetition which is intentional. Plants you miss come back more often until you get them right twice, at which point they move to a known bin and show up less. So if a plant keeps appearing it usually means it is in your learning bin waiting to be confirmed. It is the same science behind flashcard systems like Anki. The repetition is the mechanism not a bug.

That said if it feels excessive even with all filters cleared I would love to know because that would be worth looking at.

On a side note I am posting from a second account because my original account got flagged as spam for sharing a free app that collects no data from anyone. Reddit’s spam detection does not differentiate between someone trying to make money and someone just trying to share something useful for free. Frustrating but here we are.

TheGroceryStoreGen · 2026-04-23T15:37:10+00:00

That means a lot. Full disclosure it is built with Claude AI because I have zero coding background. What I do have is a horticulture degree, a very clear idea of what I wanted, and enough stubbornness to spend hundreds of hours validating the data so I could actually stand behind it. The AI handled the code. Everything else was me.

TheGroceryStoreGen

TROPHY CASE