Yes...but!

May 19 2008

Home > Columns >Yes...But! Year 8-28

The best thing you can do to save the world, and, at the same time benefit yourself and your family, is to start to grow your own food, because basically we don’t eat food, but oil. With oil barrelling toward $150.00, edibles will become ever more expensive. So get your guts in gear and start digging, something good for body and soul, as manual labour promotes peace of mind, improves physical well being while home-grown produce provides healthy nutrition for you and your loved ones.

The world now has nearly 7 billion ever more demanding mouths to feed while food supplies per capita have been shrinking for years. With Peak Oil here already or soon to come, the only way to keep inflation in check and furnish basic food for your family, is to engage in “subsistence gardening."

Today we burn 30 billion barrels of oil a year, but in 20 years annual production will be less than half that amount, while the number of people in the world will have increased by 50 percent. It doesn’t take an Einstein to figure that with drastically reduced amounts of oil and chemical fertilizer, our future will feature growing food shortages. Alternative energy sources will do little to solve the problem. Our main energy will be pure body power: we and our shovel, we and our hoe, we and our weary back, which, by the way, will save us sleeping pills. In our ‘wisdom’, we have turned prime farmland into subdivisions and big box stores, have allowed pollution to poison our pollinators, are burning food in our gas tanks instead of fueling our muscles, so, now wonder that finally, after some 210 years, the fear of global famine, expressed by English parson Thomas Malthus in his “Essay on the Principle of Population,” will come true.

The old is new again. The best security is an old-fashioned vegetable garden. The cost is minimal. And now is the time, as plenty of rain has softened the earth, making digging a lot easier. Get a sharp spade, one with a short handle. This way you lift with your hips, avoiding a ‘back-breaking’ experience. Choose a sunny patch, away from trees. Cut the grass there to the very roots, which makes turning the soil a lot easier. Shake out the sod, releasing the good earth into the dug portion. Put the grass and roots into a compost bin. Compost must be an important ingredient of your soil. If you don’t have a compost bin, start one today: put in leaves, grass cuttings, left over food, peals and all organic material. Keep the contents wet so that they disintegrate easier.

Where I live spring time comes with one obstacle: black flies. Let them bite you. After a few years you will become immune to their sting at least that is my experience. God made everything for a purpose, although I have yet to discover the good of these flies: perhaps they strengthen the immune system.

Once you have dug that patch, braved the pesky flies, endured that tired back and blisters in your hands – I wear gloves - and loosened the soil, you are ready to plant. For a start I would recommend green beans, onions, red beets, carrots, as well as a variety of cabbage plants. If your have room, plant some potatoes as well. Of course, tomatoes and squash plants are a cinch.

Remember that variety is essential. Any meal should have three colours: green salads, red beets, and orange carrots, for instance: the more colours on your plate the better. Michael Pollan, in his book “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto,” says, in a nutshell, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants.” He also says that much of what we buy in the store is not food as much as ‘foodish’, quasi-edible substances made for long shelf-life rather than nutrition and taste. When you grow your own, you know what you get.

Most vegetables are easy to grow. Green beans need little care. Carrots need a sandy soil and, since the seeds are so tiny, constant watering until the greens break through the surface. I hill my potatoes right away, making a long ridge in which to plant the seedlings. Potatoes attract Colorado potato beetles. I handpick these creatures and if there are too many I dust the plants with Rotenone, a friendly pesticide, which I also sprinkle on my broccoli and cabbages. Kale, a very healthy dark green plant, is the least trouble-prone.

So do yourself a favour, engage in a wholesome exercise, prevent a lot of foul air from happening, while enriching your table with nutritious fare. An all around win-win situation.