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Grow your own food
Tips on how to grow tasty organic food in your back garden!
Ever feel powerless when it comes to the environment? Ever get fed up of hearing more about polar bears and climate change than about things that you can actually see in your own corner of the world?
Campaigning to save habitats and reduce carbon emissions is all very worthwhile, but it’s good to balance it with making some changes in our own backyards – literally – and tuning in to our surroundings. And with so much talk about ‘food miles’, and fruit and vegetables being pumped full of chemicals and then flown half-way around the planet before they end up on our plates, what better way to start getting ‘back to nature’ than by learning to grow some of our own food?
Even if you only grow a few lettuces, you'll learn a new skill (which might come in handy if food prices keep rising along with oil prices), and you get cheap organic food instead of the pesticide-ridden stuff in the supermarket. Plus, you get to spend some time out in the sun, working off some calories and working on your tan at the same time.
You don’t need a massive garden, lots of experience, or even very much time, to start growing some food. In fact, it’s best to start off with something small and manageable, and learn as you go along.
Even if you have no garden at all, you can grow a few herbs in pots or window boxes in a sunny spot inside or outside. Buy some pots or boxes from a garden centre (or better still, see if you can get any secondhand ones), fill them with potting compost (also from the garden centre – the peat-free kind if possible), and you’re ready to go.
Most herbs grow fairly easily – oregano, rosemary and parsley are good to start with and are handy for cooking, even if you’re just making pasta or a salad. If you’ve got a yard or a balcony, you might want to plant salad vegetables in bigger boxes - fish boxes or fruit crates work well if you don’t want to buy boxes. Quite a few things with shallow roots will grow happily in boxes (including lettuce of all kinds, rocket, spring onions, garlic, and some kinds of tomatoes), but remember to choose things that you like to eat!
If you’re feeling a bit more adventurous and you have the space, you could turn a bit of your lawn or garden into a vegetable patch (if you can persuade your landlady, parents or housemates). The usual time to dig a veggie patch is in early winter, so that you can cover it and let the grass die off before planting in spring. But if you can’t wait that long you could dig up a small patch into ridges, add some compost or organic fertiliser, and try a few low-maintenance crops like late potatoes, spinach or cabbage.
There are plenty of websites with gardening tips as well as info on introductory gardening courses. Check out: www.irishseedsavers.ie, www.theorganiccentre.ie, www.organic-gardening.net and www.dulra.org, or just google organic growing and see what you can find.
Inevitably a few things will go wrong at first – your lettuce will be attacked by slugs or your potatoes will get blight, but making mistakes is the way to learn, and you get better with practice. Growing our own food is one of the most direct and ‘real’ ways we can take action on the environment and start to change the way we think and the way we live, even if it’s only a few lettuces. Happy growing (and happy eating!).
By: Mairead Lineen
