Growing Your Own

I came across a really wonderful article this morning by Michael Pollan, the author of the "Omnivore's Dilemma" and loads of other excellent books.

Read it here: Why bother?

The “cheap-energy mind,” as Wendell Berry called it, is the mind that asks, “Why bother?” because it is helpless to imagine — much less attempt — a different sort of life, one less divided, less reliant.

His point is that instead of sitting helpless, watching the TV as food prices go up and up, in world markets over which we apparently have no control, we can actually get out there in the dirt and grow some for ourselves.

And here's an article from Sharon Astyk's blog on the same subject:

Victory Gardens

A book I'm going to have to get:
Food Not Lawns (not that you HAVE to get it at Amazon, but at least you can read about it there.)

There's no food so local as that you grow yourself. We've spent the last six months on a 100-foot diet for fruit. We're still eating applesauce and dried apples and peaches from our yard. The cherry, plum and peach trees are in full bloom. The Nanking cherry shrubs just finished. The apple blossoms are standing in the wings.

I've got seed potatoes in the house, ready to plant out when I get
a little time to make some holes in the ground. Potatoes.... now that's an EASY crop to grow. Make a hole, drop potato piece in, fill in. Water once in a while. As the potato bushes get growing they choke out the weeds. Dig up, wash, and eat. What could be simpler? Of course you can get better yields by taking a bit more care.

You can also get a old plastic garbage can, make a few holes in the bottom for drainage, half-fill with some dirt and mulch/straw/etc. Now the potato pieces. Fill in gradually as they grow. Water occasionally. When you harvest, tip the thing over, pull the potatoes out. Done!

Someone I know put potato pieces on the ground (she had softer ground than we do), covered them carefully with straw mulch, didn't have to water because she lives in upstate New York, and got a good crop.

It probably won't work to use those ghost potatoes you might have left in the pantry. The ones with the long pale sprouts. Although I'm always tempted by things that want to grow. You can get seed potatoes at all the nurseries, grown virus-free, ready to grow, which will do better for you. I like to order my seed potatoes from Ronnigers, who have dozens and dozens of different varieties.

Tomatoes are a big favorite. If you have nothing more than a sunny deck, you can grow tomatoes in 5-gallon tubs. You will have to water them a lot to keep them happy. Or you can get self-watering pots, or make them. The book: Incredible Vegetables from Self-Watering Containers.

If you think about it, we have spent the last hundred years in this country turning prime farmland into suburbs and shopping malls and roads. The land under the shopping malls is pretty much lost to us while the shopping malls are there, but we do have these lovely bits of land around our houses. Currently most of them are in chemicalized lawns, taking huge amounts of time, energy, and water, but they DON'T HAVE TO BE. Small plots are by far the most productive farms in the world, everywhere in the world including here. You don't need to leave wide lanes for the tractor. You are right there on the ground, paying attention, putting in a little outdoor exercise every day, bringing in baskets of fresh food to your kitchen. Even a 20x20 garden, well kept, will produce an amazing amount of food for you.

Some closing thoughts from Michael Pollan:
But the act I want to talk about is growing some — even just a little — of your own food. Rip out your lawn, if you have one, and if you don’t — if you live in a high-rise, or have a yard shrouded in shade — look into getting a plot in a community garden. Measured against the Problem We Face, planting a garden sounds pretty benign, I know, but in fact it’s one of the most powerful things an individual can do — to reduce your carbon footprint, sure, but more important, to reduce your sense of dependence and dividedness: to change the cheap-energy mind.