"It's Funny, But There's No Bulb."
- 2.05.2026, 14:44
Belarusian IT workers told about what they do on dachas and balconies and how much it costs.
In April, every normal Belarusian (okay, not everyone) starts thinking about planting potatoes (okay, at least radishes). It happens among IT specialists too - no matter whether they live at home or in a foreign country.
The devby.io website found such vegetable gardeners in Belarus and Poland and asked them how they have grown land (or are only going to) and why they need it in the XXI century. Spoiler: among other things, they exercise hardwares and write pet projects.
"I set up timer watering - saved the harvest while we went on vacation"
Aitishnik and dacha dweller, enjoys working with plumbing and electrics, has built a smart watering system at his dacha near Minsk
- Once I was an ardent opponent of the dacha. Do I have nothing else to do? Around so much interesting: traveling, ropes, competitions, kayaks, caving, bicycles! But with the arrival of children, the opportunities for hobbies have sharply decreased. And then my wife's mother bought a dacha 25 km from the Moscow Ring Road (we monitored it for a long time and traveled a lot, in the end we got a house with some problems, but the place is very good, I will not say the price - inexpensive).
And I found some pluses in it. Why do you need a dacha?
Fresh vegetables, berries and fruits for children. Allegedly environmentally friendly products from the conventional farmer's market cost triple the price, but the price does not guarantee purity. And here we have grown it ourselves and we know for sure that no chemicals were used to water the vegetable garden.
Nature. Fresh air. For the whole family. We arrived - we made a barbecue, heated the stove in the house... There is no need to search and pay for accommodation, fear that they will take your place.
Personal hobby. Here you can do something with your hands. I, for example, know how to automate. Therefore, built a system of smart irrigation and integrated into it "hardware" (sensors temperature, soil moisture, air, control of the irrigation valve) + AI-generation of irrigation schedule with the weather forecast.
Last year I set up watering stupidly on a timer (Wi-Fi-relay Tuya for 4 channels), and it saved the crop while we were on vacation. Next, I'll probably do grouping by channels for different crops. It will be necessary to make a request to the AI to generate a watering mode for "greenhouse 1, where such and such crops grow", "greenhouse 2" and a couple more channels for outdoor crops.
In essence, this is a pet project, which in time can be released to a wider audience.
What grows at the dacha? Cucumbers, tomatoes, peas, strawberries, strawberries, blueberries, porechka, fruit trees, zucchini (where without them). Funny, but there are no bulbs. And in general, actually from the vegetable garden I am far away - there are women tucked in. I can maximum something heavy to submit - bring - not to interfere, and the rest I'd rather be my technique to deal with (+electricity, plumbing, Internet), and let no one get in there.
Mozhno long argue, compare the cost of the dacha and its maintenance with the cost of the option "every weekend we go somewhere and do not sweat with the house, the plot and beds". But we don't even consider the economics of a dacha project. It is clear that if you compare the harvest with the price of store (even farmer's!) products, the balance will not match.
The more so that the most valuable thing - time - at the dacha also takes a lot: in the season for 10-16 hours a week. Plus my pet project takes up the gaps between my main job, upbringing and children's clubs. It's hard to balance work, life, kids, hobbies, and traveling. And yes, it's vacation trips that interfere with my hobbies.
But how to count in money that zen when the kids went and picked cucumbers from the beds themselves? Actually, for the sake of this whole vegetable garden and started.
Advice for those who are looking for a dacha right now:
It is better to look at the house with a specialist. That can assess the foundation, construction, the state of wooden structures, furnace, electrics (the presence or absence of grounding - it is electrical safety), plumbing, will pick on every crack, point out the likely shoals.
Even if the house with problems, they can usually be solved. But to move the site will not work. Therefore, pay attention to your neighbors, including distant neighbors. If possible, talk to them. Neighborhood wars in the dachas - a fierce evil.
Three-phase power supply is better. For example, to put a boiler or charging for an electric car.
Internet. Even if you don't plan to work remotely, it's good to have a connection (I had to make a router with a small antenna).
See if the porch is sloping. In this place, probably eroded the soil. So, there may be problems there: for example, sewer leaks.
"Plants help to take root in a new environment"
KIRA, an IT girl in emigration; she dreams of her own apartment with an ogrodok in Poland, but in the meantime she grows vegetables and herbs in flower pots
- My parents had a dacha, my grandmother had a vegetable garden in the village, so working on the land has always been familiar to me. But I can't say that I liked it - it was just a duty to help my parents.
But when I moved to Poland a few years ago, I had my own need to pick the earth. Unfortunately, now I don't have a dacha, but I am planning to buy an apartment and I am considering the option of only having a vegetable garden on the first floor. And while I have a vegetable garden on the balcony - in flower boxes.
Now I have there two potatoes, two boxes of sweet peas, a box of onions and two boxes of herbs. I wonder how the basil will do. Also in May I plan to plant two string beans.
Potatoes are a kind of hereditary hobby for me. Parents usually experiment with different varieties, well, and I planted not just tubers of "Bedronka", and Canary. In summer, I brought a bag of potatoes from vacation, they lived till spring, and now I buried them. After all, I am a Belarusian!
And last year I had cherry tomatoes and cucumbers. And there were so many cherry tomatoes that in summer I didn't buy them at all. Greens in the store, too, I do not take - enough of their own. In the plans to try to grow bay leaf - as a balcony-room plant.
Eshe I had a date, but he did not survive this winter, but the fig survived, and soon he will go to live from the room on the balcony. I'm not sure what good it will do as food, I just like this plant and it was interesting to grow it from a seed. I'm not a pro, I just like it for fun.
Polish people like flowers on the balcony, but I'm not very interested in buying ready-made plants - I like to see how life comes out of a seed. And fragrant peas or green sweet peas - what difference does it make. These are my flowers, edible.
Economic or gastronomic sense in my gardening, of course, there is no, plants for me - it is relaxation, fiddling with them calms and grounding, gives rest to the head.
We discussed this with my psychologist, she says that farming is quite a common story among immigrants, because it is a really good anti-stress, and it also helps to literally root in a new environment.
Why am I looking for an apartment with a garden and not a private house? Because I can't afford a house, I have to look after it, it's a big responsibility and expense. But an apartment with a vegetable garden - very convenient: you live here and pick on the little things, without breeding superplantation. But this is my opinion now - let's see how my opinion will change in ten years.
By the way, I am also thinking about bonsai from a pomegranate tree. But, unfortunately or fortunately, there is not enough time and space for all my ideas.
"Not much work, but food without pesticides for a whole season"
EVGENIUS, a manager in IT, after buying a country house erected a greenhouse in the yard
- We have a vegetable garden in the form of a greenhouse plus fruit trees. The greenhouse is ordinary polycarbonate, I bought and put it up the next year after buying a country house. In 40 is drawn to the land.
In my childhood I helped water tomatoes and peppers in my parents' greenhouse - maybe that's why I decided to recreate this experience, and at the same time to show my children how to grow. Probably, children were the maximum driver: I wanted to repeat for them my dacha childhood, when you wake up in the morning and run to look for ripe, juicy strawberries on the bed.
So in different years we grew a little bit of everything: strawberries, blueberries, porechka, currants, gooseberries, blackberries, raspberries and even, purely for educational purposes, a few bunches of potatoes, onions, carrots and sugar corn.
Now, of all this variety, the only things left are bushes with berries that don't need much looking after, and a greenhouse.
The greenhouse is automated, measuring 3×6 meters. The people who sold it (about 1000 rubles six years ago), and mounted it themselves.
Additional had to buy tubes for auto irrigation, electronic timer watering, temperature sensor, thermal actuators of shutters, fan (at first there were a lot of shutters, but with a fan and only two shutters in the spring less heat loss and more effective cooling), ceramic IR heater, fertile soil, metal high beds, mesh for cucumbers, mesh from moles under the beds, wiring, sockets. I think, in the end, the costs exceeded $1.5-2 thousand, but for a summer hobby is not much, especially since they were one-time.
Electricity I spend less and less, because I am no longer eager, as in the first years, to get a very early harvest. It costs several hundred dollars to beat the weather by two weeks. Therefore, now I use electricity only on the hottest days (for the fan) and at frosts (as emergency heating). During the season I spend no more than 100$.
I work remotely, so I can give time to plants. But even if I didn't - the greenhouse doesn't require much attention, it is fully automated: auto irrigation, auto ventilation, heating for early harvest.
Of course, more is invested in the greenhouse than tomatoes cost, but the varieties I grow, you can't buy just like that on Komarovka. These are huge sweet beef tomatoes, ripened right on the branch, different cherries - multicolored and sweet as candy, super modern hybrids, bred recently. All these varieties are "strictly opposite" to tasteless store varieties like LSL (Long Shelf Life). The tomato harvest lasts from July to probably November.
Thanks to automation, the work is not much, but the food - its own, tasty, organic, pesticide-free - for the whole season. So why not?
The plan is to replace the polycarbonate greenhouse with a large English greenhouse to grow other interesting crops, such as figs and persimmons. And in general to have more space. And now everything is overgrown so that in late summer it is difficult to get through the thickets.