Well, it’s been two weeks since I planted my tomato seeds and most of them are coming along nicely. They have just started putting out their first amazing petite tomato leaves. So cool!
I plan to expand my vegetable garden a little bit this year. I’ve got snap pea seeds to try, and another few green delicacies. How about you? Are you planting a few vegetables this year? Or maybe a lot?
Roger Doiron is looking for revolutionaries to join his Subversive Plot. His Plot looks like this:
Roger Doiron is the founding director of Kitchen Gardeners International, linked here. In his funny, entertaining TED talk, Roger outlines some of the challenges our world food supply faces in coming decades. In the next 50 years, more food will have to be produced to keep up with the growing population than was produced in the previous 10,000 years!
Local food can be part of the solution. Roger’s talking really local. Like your own backyard. Oh, you don’t have to have a lot of space to grow a few vegetables. There are lots of creative ways to garden.
Small gardens really can make a difference. At the peak of the Victory Garden movement, small gardens were providing 40% of all produce. Of course, not everyone has the time or interest or space for a garden and incredibly, there are places where growing vegetables in your front yard is illegal!
But things are changing. In Maine, the town of Sedgwick unanimously passed an ordinance giving its citizens the right “to produce, process, sell, purchase, and consume local foods of their choosing.” It’s a bucking of state and federal laws. The town government added: “It shall be unlawful for any law or regulation adopted by the state or federal government to interfere with the rights recognized by this Ordinance.”
Roger offers many interesting points worth pondering. Here’s Roger Doiron:
Willow House Chronicles 
I think the province should promote vegetable gardening and support community gardens, if it wants to get its healthcare and social assistance costs down. I’m always seeing little unused spaces in town – like paved sections between a parking lot and sidewalk where you can’t park, you don’t walk, and the only function of that bit of concrete or asphalt is to contribute to urban heat bubbles, interfere with the hydrologic cycle and contribute to flooding and pollution, and use up resources, when instead it could be contributing to air quality, water quality, stormwater infiltration, community well-being, public health and safety, and food security. Seems silly.
Wow, listen to you, sounding all knowledgable and scientific. Much more of that and King Harper may need to muzzle you!
Roger Doiron does bring up gov’t subsidies for gardens. You should give this video a listen.
It would be great to see unused spaces sporting gardens. What about Peterborough Green-Up? Or maybe a little guerilla gardening, anyone?
I’m shamelessly stealing this video, too! I’m putting it on my gardening blog – full tribute to you as my source!!! 🙂
Ellen, it’s another good one! Everyone needs a garden. Some people just don’t know it.