We have mentioned the virtues of gardening before, but with spring ending and summer heating up, we encourage our readers to take a look at what can be done.
You don’t have room for a garden? Most living situations, even in tight quarters in the city, provide some opportunity, even a small one, to do a little gardening. My garden last year was two plants that produced several tomatoes and peppers for my own personal consumption. They were planted on a one-foot by three-foot patch of ground behind my apartment building.
Literally no ground to plant on? Try finding a 5 gallon bucket. Drill half-inch holes in the bottom for drainage, fill with dirt, and you have a planter ready for a small tomato or pepper plant.
How does planting a garden green your life? So how does this improve your envirohuman impact? Take a look in your refrigerator. How many pounds of produce did you buy at the store this week? Do you know how far those items traveled? Okay, unless you go full-scale gardener, as many still do (a worthwhile pursuit) you’re not going to replace all of that with your backyard garden.
But what if you replaced three pounds of it weekly for the spring and summer months (potentially a solid twenty or more weeks), by growing a few items: tomatoes, lettuce, peppers, carrots, or cabbage? Even a novice could read and learn to do those items with just a small amount of space. Grow a few herbs in an indoor window box for a year-round benefit.
Again, it may only be one person, that is, you, decreasing the need for tomatoes shipped across the country (among other produce). But sixty pounds (three pounds multiplied by a twenty-week summer) adds up if you get just one million additional Americans to buy back into what once was the norm (that is in addition to current gardeners). That would be sixty million tons of food grown in backyards rather than being shipped across the country!
Imagine if even more people partook, the reduced amount of greenhouse gases released just to put food on the table would be realized. So start gardening and once you have learned how to do it well, encourage friends, family, and neighbors to take this opportunity.
Gardening can save you money, too!
Use a few packets of seeds, or if you are getting a late start, use seedlings, and watch as sales increase in stores this summer (have you seen how the cost of a barrel is affecting everything we buy!?) and you have produce to help you finish off a great many home-cooked meals. Don’t buy into synthetic chemical and/or petroleum-based products, either. You can make your own compost or try such products as Terracycle’s Worm Poop, instead, reducing demand for oil, and improving your envirohuman impact even more!
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