Grow Food

Posted by John McCabe

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GROW FOOD

The absolute number one cause of greenhouse gas emissions is related to food production, packaging, shipping, marketing, and cooking – and especially to diets that include meat, dairy, and junk food.

Eat regionally: it uses at least 50 times less fossil fuels. Eat organic: It uses 50% less fossil fuels. Eat a vegan diet that is all or mostly raw: it uses over 15 times less water, over 25 times less land, and over 30 times less petroleum than the typical American diet.

Disconnect from the corporate food train. Grow food using heirloom, non-hybridized, and non-genetically modified seeds. Aim for variety in your garden. There are 7,000 species of edible plants.

Educate yourself about veganic gardening, which uses no bone meal or blood fertilizers.

Creating an amazing culinary garden doesn’t have to cost much. Books and magazines about gardening are available at libraries. There are many places from where you can get free seeds, cuttings, vines, and fruiting bushes and trees. Some of the Web sites listed below provide information about this. Many people who own land, including people with empty backyards, will allow people to plant there.

Nurture wild edible plants native to your region. Include wildflowers to support local bee colonies. Plant berry bushes and fruiting trees in nearby wildland. Learn how to identify edible plants in your local environment, including what you may think of as weeds, such as dandelion, purslane, young fiddlehead ferns, watercress, milkweed shoots, lambs quarters, chickweed, and sorrel. Also, learn the difference between edible and non-edible mushrooms.

Learn about the Dervaes family of Pasadena, California. They turned their small yard into a garden that produces thousands of pounds of fruits and vegetables every year: http://www.PathToFreedom.com.

Anthony Anderson works as a fashion model in New York City. He is constructing a permaculture home for himself in Minnesota. His Web site gives detailed updates of how he is creating his garden with fruiting trees and bushes, and various culinary gardens centered around a greenhouse and two-bedroom yurt. Access: http://www.RawModel.com.

“Thoughtful and informed people realize that local is the answer – local seeds which grow well in a certain area need fewer chemicals, practices like crop rotation, composting, green manure-ing (using crops, especially nitrogen-fixing plants like beans, to return nutrients to the soil) – all these techniques create a healthier soil which needs fewer chemicals. And that food creates healthier people.”

– Deborah Koons Garcia, director of the documentaries The Future of Food and In Good Heart: Soil and the Mystery of Fertility

“We live off of what comes out of the soil, not what’s in the bank. If we squander the ecological capital of the soil, the capital on paper won't much matter... For the past 50 or 60 years, we have followed industrialized agricultural policies that have increased the rate of destruction of productive farmland. For those 50 or 60 years, we have let ourselves believe the absurd notion that as long as we have money we will have food. If we continue our offenses against the land and the labor by which we are fed, the food supply will decline, and we will have a problem far more complex than the failure of our paper economy. Remember, if our agriculture is not sustainable then our food supply is not sustainable... Either we pay attention or we pay a huge price, not so far down the road. When we face the fact that civilizations have destroyed themselves by destroying their farmland, it’s clear that we don’t really have a choice.”

– Wes Jackson, co-founder of The Land Institute, http://www.landinstitute.org

Book of interest:

The Forager’s Harvest: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants, by Samuel Thayer

American Community Gardening Association: http://www.CommunityGarden.org

Bioneers, http://www.Bioneers.org

Bountiful Gardens, http://www.BountifulGardens.org

Community Alliance with Family Farmers: http://www.CAFF.org

Community Gardening Association: http://www.CommunityGarden.org

Edible Estates, http://www.EdibleEstates.org

FedCo Co-op Garden Supplies, POB 520, Waterville, ME 04903; 207-873-7333; http://www.fedcoseeds.com

Food Empowerment Project, POB 7071, San Jose, CA 95150-7071; 530-848-4021; http://www.FoodIsPower.org

Food Not Lawns: http://www.FoodNotLawns.com

Garden Project, http://www.GardenProject.org

Growing Organic, http://www.GrowingOrganic.com

Harmony Hikes, http://www.HarmonyHikes.com. Sergei Boutenko’s wild food foraging adventure hikes. Sergei is part of the Boutenko family of Ashland, Oregon. They have hiked hundreds of miles in the wild while surviving on wild plants. With his sister, Valya, he is also the author of the recipe book, Fresh. Access: http://www.RawFamily.com.

Institute for the Study of Edible Wild Plants and Other Forageables, http://www.WildFoodAdventures.com

The Learning Garden, http://www.TheLearningGarden.org. Venice, California location. Often have raw food gatherings on weekends.

Native Seeds: http://www.NativeSeeds.org

Organic Gardening Magazine, http://www.organicgardening.com

Oregon Tilth: http://www.Tilth.org

Organic Seed Alliance: http://www.SeedAlliance.org

Permaculture, http://www.Permaculture.co.uk

Rare Seeds, http://www.RareSeeds.com

Ray Mears, http://www.RayMears.com

The Rhizome Collective, Austin, TX; http://www.rhizomecollective.org

Save Our Seed: http://www.SavingOurSeed.org

Seed Alliance, http://www.SeedAlliance.org