Gardening is sort of my coping strategy after burning out of a very high pressure and fast paced technical career. One of the things I enjoy about dirt growing is that because an entire ecosystem is supporting you it works fine tackled entirely intuitively.

We do have a bunch of outdoors that's just concrete slab though, I've wanted to put intensive things like brassicas that you want basically all year round, or plants that are very sensitive to irregular watering (probably my problem with squash family stuff). The fussiness of hydro has put me off a bit, like even kratky needs topping up after a string of 35 degree shade temp days (although foil on the outside or doing it in styro might help there. But ahhh see! evil intrusive thoughts of optimisation!).

You're right about the benefits, particularly for veganic growing. I use insect netting extensively but if ants bring aphids in there's little I can do manage that, or crickets tunnel in and so on, so we often share a lot of what we grow haha. Realistically it's probably less daunting than it is in my head, especially if I throw some basic automation with timers or whatever on.