Not growing your own food
Why you are doing great.
As someone who digests a lot of media around gardening, I end up digesting a lot of online discussion about how others garden. This, combined with frequent near-daily conversations about the most virtuous way to garden, has led me to write a blog I never thought I would write- thoughts I never thought I would think.
I am so tired of the social media around growing your own food. It looks simple when someone has a garden or allotment filled with beautiful bounty. Most gardens have a few beds designated ‘veges,’ and many of the people I talk to are a tad ashamed to show that they do not successfully grow a bounty of food from those beds. They say they can’t grow <this vegetable> as a rule, ever. They are Black Thumbs, they say, people who are not Green Thumbs and therefore have failed to grow their own food.
There are whole movements dedicated to growing your own food and the ensuing implication that a Good, Virtuous, Successful person will be growing their own food. It’s rubbish. Please don’t feel bad if you do not grow your own food, whether you want to or not.
Why is it better to grow your own food? I don’t make my own furniture. I don’t sew my own clothes. I don’t whittle my own cutlery. That would be silly! Because there are ethical ways to source most things, that are better and more efficient than me doing it myself. We live in a society where we all have different jobs, the result is that our jobs raise the quality of living for everyone.
The food industry is appalling in most ways, and many people believe commercial agriculture should not exist. Unfortunately, our population density requires commercial agriculture. There is a lot wrong with large scale farming and primary industries, and there are good arguments for those industries changing substantially. Growing your own food is considered ‘opting out’ of those primary industries, and therefore it is virtuous to grow your own food. But we can’t all opt out- literally, we do not have the space or resources. (If you read this week’s Wellington Week, yes, this is why Holmgren advocates for Eugenics. Just cull a bunch of people so the survivors can grow their own food. Cripes.)
In order to grow much of your own food, you need a lot of things going on in your life. I am no gardening influencer, but I am very similar to them in a number of ways, so let’s break down what it took for me to be able to grow a significant amount of my own food.
What does it take to grow your own food?
Space and mobility
This is a non negotiable. You need outdoor space which gets ample sun. The people you live with need to be on board with your use of this space- you might need to rip up existing garden in order to have the space to grow food, which can carry social repercussions (and a loss of Bond, if you are a tenant). You need to be physically capable of gardening in this space- how often can you bend to your toes or crouch? How much can you carry? How much spare energy do you have? The less mobile you are, the more complex things become. At this time in history, in the times of medium density housing, apartments and subdivision, we all need to realistically assess our levels of space, mobility, and energy to grow food. (I have to give a shout out to Vegepods here- being able to plonk something on concrete or a deck, which does not require bending, has re-opened vegetable gardening back up to many people.) You have to be physically able to garden, within your personal situation. The more food you grow, the more space and physical ability you need. Your limits are generally pre-determined.
Enjoyment
I personally cannot think of anything more wholesome, positive and rewarding than growing my own food. My personal food growing accounts for about 10% of my daily brain space. But I love it. It fills my cup, so I am able to allocate time I would otherwise spend on another hobby (or sleeping). But- if you do not enjoy the tasks required, how much of your life can you realistically dedicate to growing your own food? How much brain space can you dedicate to a new chore? If you do enjoy the tasks required, how much time do you have to complete those tasks?
Resources
A significant amount of my gardening life centres around scrounging, around green waste, around the fact that I often have more organic compost and mulch than I could ever hope to use- I am often overflowing with resources, due to spending 40hrs a week as a gardener. Most of my friends are also local gardeners, so we share seeds, cuttings, produce (which of course requires me to have things to give to them as well). Clients give me things they don’t know how to use- animal manure, compost bins, hoes, sieves. I am so lucky. I have accumulated resources because others do not grow their own food, so if everyone did grow their own food, we would be competing over those resources. I maybe spend $20 a season, on seeds, plants, soil additives, tools. If I did not have access to free resources, I would be spending hundreds of dollars every season, which relies on the existence of large scale industries for mulches, composts, animal biproducts/waste, plants (the same large scale industries that growing our own food is supposed to conquor). You have to bring in resources to grow much of your own food. If you do not already have access to a lot of resources, growing your own food is either more expensive, or more time consuming. If everyone was to grow their own food, the industries we rely on for resources to grow our own food would not exist in enough volume to supply us.
Knowledge
I have Seen Things as a gardener. A generation’s worth of gardening mistakes and environmental situations, without having caused them myself, without wasting a season on them. I have learned to fix things that I never broke, I have worked in sandy soils without ever living in them, broken clay soils in a multitude of ways, and seen the outcomes over a series of years, all concurrently. I have also learned how to grow food from extremely skilled gardeners over a period of decades. This is how I am successful at growing my own food- I have spent about ten hours a week learning, since 2013. The one thing I have learned is that no gardening question is stupid, and knowledge is a blessing which we need to share in order to succeed. The volume of knowledge which you need to successfully, consistently grow your own food is significant, and the less you know, the more time you need to spend researching, the larger your mistakes, the more disheartening a failed harvest can be, the more you end up believing you can’t do it.
I want to say, I can help you with everything except for the amount of space you have available. I want to say, you can get around almost all of these- you can grow vegetables under your roses, you can plant a pear instead of an Ornamental Pear- you have me, I can teach you, I can give you things… I so desperately want everyone to enjoy it as much as I do… but in order to grow your own food, you need to be the person growing your own food. You need to jump these hurdles on your own. You need to form relationships with other gardeners, with your neighbours, to reduce the things you need to buy.
How much of your time can you dedicate to overcoming the hurdles required, to grow your own food? It depends on the cards life has dealt you, and how motivated you are.
And look, I am here for you and I absolutely want to go on this journey with you, if you want to grow your own food. I love it. I just love it. There is an entire portion of the blog called Grow With Me, if you want to learn. Please remember that most people who you see on social media, who grow most of their own food, are already wealthy and are paid to make content about how they grow most of their own food. They do not live like that while holding down other fulltime commitments.
You do not need to grow your own food. You are not less-than, if you do not grow your own food, even if you have the space and mobility to do so. You haven’t failed if you do not make this a priority, or never even start.
We are still feeding the industries we opted out of
In order to grow a substantial amount of your own food, more than just a little, you need to rely on outdated and planet-destroying practices including-
Buying fertilisers and soil additives which have been mined, created from petrochemicals, or are biproducts of the industries you are trying to opt out of. Granular fertilisers are from petrochemicals. Lime is from lime quarries. Coffee grinds, a ‘good’ choice, have been shipped around the world and are often from unethical/exploitative practices.
Buying seeds from seed farms which are by necessity giant monocultures, just like the huge monoculture fields of lettuces, cabbages and tomatoes which we are trying to move away from.
Having a larger sized property which puts pressure on the housing stock (the bigger your property, the smaller someone else’s is, if you live in a city or town).
Bringing in feed and bedding for any animals, most of which again are from biproducts of industry.
A really specific thing- if everyone collected seaweed from the seaside, it would be an ecological disaster.
If we need animal blood and bone or manure, there is an animal out there which was farmed in some way to create that resource, almost always in a way which was not good for the soil (or animal!) in that location.
And also- most of the time, it is terribly, extremely inefficient to grow your own food. It costs the planet substantially fewer resources if your food is grown to a larger scale in locations where those plants thrive.
I am not enlightened, I have not created an efficient system, I am only able to maintain my garden for cheap because I have little competition for resources which are a free biproduct of living in a city. Oh, and if you all did your own gardening, because I learnt on the job, I would not have that knowledge, or that job!
Because some people will point this out- there is a concept called a ‘closed system,’ in which, the argument is, if nothing leaves the land then the same nutrients remain on the land, cycling through the soil, to vegetables, to bodies, to compost. This requires you to safely compost your own waste, and your own body, and ignores the fact that we expend energy during these processes, energy which does not return to the soil even if we are buried there. In a closed system, unless we continue to bring in nutrients, the soil will deplete. It is absolutely best to strive towards a closed system, in a way which will not make you sick. But it is an unachievable ideal, even if you refuse to let any scrap of organic material leave your home, and compost your own poop and are buried onsite. So strive towards it! Pee on your lemon tree somtimes! Come up short, and pat yourself on the back for trying.
Look, this is getting really long, and I usually focus on what you can do, not tell you that you can’t. It is much more fun to say, you can! You are capable! But we are moving quickly towards Spring, and the season of Garden Envy and comparing your yields to what you see on social media. I need for you to know that you do not have to grow your own food if you don’t want to, and you do not have to grow a lot of your own food to be a raging success. I am proud of you for whatever you end up doing, as long as you do not feel that you have failed to meet an invisible standard.
What do you need to do, then?
Our population is large enough that we need large scale farming in some form, and there are people working within those industries to produce ethical, environmentally conscious foods. Where you can, do your best, within your budget. Consider where you are buying your food and whether you know where it all came from. This is often called ‘Conscious Consumption.’
If you are growing food this year
Please consider what you do buy in terms of gardening equipment, ‘inputs’ (compost, fertilisers) and plants. Try to stop things from entering landfill, and try to keep your green waste on your own property. Think about where your purchases have all come from, and whether you can do better. Think about what will grow well in your area. Try to buy your plants from smaller scale nurseries, second only to sharing with other gardeners in your area.
Avoid petrochemical fertilisers (the little granular balls, mostly). Avoid any sort of chemical spray, and think hard about what is best for the local insect life. Build in ‘redundancies’- things you are doing to encourage this, discourage that- and do more than one thing. Focus on supporting the life within the soil.
Think critically about any successes or failures which you have had in the past, and talk and share where you can. Enable other gardeners to learn from your experiences, good and bad. Ask people what their experiences are.
If you are not doing anything with a garden which you are responsible for, make sure any weeds do not creep into the neighbours, or drop seeds. That’s it. That’s all.
And tell me how you get on!
I grow with the intent of helping pollinators. They love squash blossoms, but unfortunately so do the vine borers. I grow as much native as possible and some things are just for enjoyment.
You’re terrific, Zoe