Grow your own food!

The next step after buying organic food in my weekly bag (see one of my previous posts) is growing some of it myself ...

Somehow, since I am back, I've grown more and more interested in really knowing where my food comes from (I read "the Omnivore's Dilemma" which is a great read!!) and the best way of knowing where it comes from is growing it yourself. The cherry tomatoes my sister was growing in her garden last summer helped too ... it is nice to just be able to walk into the garden and pick some.

Growing your own food seems to be in fashion and many techniques are being developed so you can also grow food if you do not have a balcony, terrace or garden. For example window-farming allows you to grow anything you want right in front of your window. At windowfarms.org you will find an online community that is working together on promoting and further improving the technique.

In the Netherlands, like in many places in the US (e.g. in New York you find a lot of farming on roofs), more and more people get organised to grow food in the city. This weekend my sister and I went to a film festival of "Eetbaar Rotterdam" ("Edible Rotterdam") which is an NGO that tries to introduce farming in the city of Rotterdam, on small plots in neighborhoods, around trees in the parking lots, in city parks etc. Anywhere where there is some land, vegetables can be grown.

The festival mostly showed short videos of different initiatives that are being taken mostly in the US but also in the Netherlands. How about a farm on a barge using hydroponics (check here)? The same can be done on rooftops. Or how about keeping bees on the roofs of New York City (check here)? The idea is to make farming in the cities as sustainable as possible.

Another one that I found really ingeneous and so simple is where two lady city-farmers ask residents to use plots in their gardens to grow vegetables. Of course it would be nicer if residents would help (and maybe some do), but the idea of using parts of gardens of residents makes at least that residents see the vegetables grow in their own garden (check here). Just check out some of these videos and be inspired.

As for my own city farming practices, I am currently working as a volunteer at a small vegetable garden at the children's farm in Culemborg and I have some basil, tomatoes and strawberries growing in some big pots on my balcony. I have to admit, I did buy seedlings this time. Next year, I promise, I'll start with seeds. In the coming months I will be doing some additional research to either build a window farm for inside or some bigger boxes for outside.

So, here is to my strawberries, tomatoes and basil: May they grow happily and abundantly!

Have a great week!
Rose