A year ago my girlfriend and I moved in together. We are both in our forties and the merger was quite well thought through. We took our time and found a tiny little house in our favourite suburb with a lovely garden. Quite naturally we started growing food. At first it was mostly herbs and and a few tomatoes, but as they flourished, and we enjoyed eating from the garden, we became bolder.
At first we grew in pots, but soon we were building wooden boxes from discarded wood, lining plastic crates with newspaper and even planting in large hemp bags, the kind they use to ship coffee beans. We dug a compost heap and fed it with waste from the garden and our table. We had little trays for germinating seeds which were then planted out. Some were even planted in the back garden in between flowers and foliage. Suddenly we had butterflies and ladybirds visiting our garden as well as birds that we have not seen there before.
We grew most plants from seed and before long we had more than twenty types of herbs and vegetables in our garden. Sometimes we had a glut of one thing and then we would gift it or put it in the compost, to be returned to the garden next year. Sometimes the plants were in the wrong place and we had to replant them (sometimes more than once!) until they were happy. Sometimes the lettuce was too bitter or tough and then we looked for better seeds.
We noticed that we no longer had vegetables spoiling in the fridge. We no longer made pasta sauce with dried herbs, seeing that fresh herbs were at hand. Over time our disposable waste was down to half a grocery bag a week.
Yes it costs money, but it’s still cheaper than buying. Yes it takes time, but it’s much better than looking for parking or standing in a queue each week. We started noticing a change in how we eat, what we throw away and how we consume.
It’s a small change, but it’s still growing!
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